Zinn - Notes on Slavery without submission, emancipation without freedom Flashcards
Why did the US not abolish slavery?
‘overpowering practicality’ Zinn
No. cotton produced statistic?
1790 - 1000 tons
1860 - 1 million tons
No. slaves statistics?
1790 - 500,000 slaves
1860 - 4 million
John Brown
Hung - with federal complicity - in 1859 for trying to abolish slavery
- Used small-scale violence
Why did the south agree to abolish slavery?
‘a safe [and] profitable’ decision. Zinn
When was slave importation to US illegal?
1808
John Hope Franklin (Author of ‘From Slavery to Freedom’) views on the banning of slave importation?
‘the law went unenforced’
Estimates that 250,000 slaves were illegally imported before the civil war
Largest US slave revolt?
1811 in New Orleans.
- 400 to 500 slaves wounded Andry (plantation owner) and killed his son.
- Attacked by U.S. army. 66 slaves killed and 16 tried and shot by firing squad.
Philosophy of Harriet Tubman?
‘You’ll be free or die’
- Conductor of Underground Railroad
Quote by Genovese
Abolition was ‘not so much out of sympathy for the blacks as out of hatred for the rich planters’
Political plantation song?
‘O Canaan, sweet Canaan, I am bound for the land of Canaan’
Canaan = North
How many free slaves in the north between 1830 - 1850?
1830 - 130,000
1850 - 200,000
Example of a Black abolitionist in 1829?
David Walker:
- Wrote ‘Walker’s Appeal’.
- Georgia (state) offered a reward of $10,000 to anyone who would deliver him alive and $1,000 to anyone who could kill him.
Found dead in 1830
Slave’s opinion to the Fugitive Slave Act?
Loguen (minister in Syracuse, New York)
‘I don’t respect this law - I don’t fear it - I won’t obey it! It outlaws me, and I outlaw it…’
When was slavery abolished in British West Indies?
1833
John Brown’s views on why there needed to be a Civil War?
‘I, John Brown, am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood’
Who was in John Brown’s striking force?
22 men
- 5 were black (2 of these killed on spot, 1 ran away and 2 hanged.)
Dred Scott
Supreme Court of the United States declared in 1857 that he could not sue for his freedom because he was not a person, but property.
Richard Hofstadter’s views of Lincoln?
‘Middle class in his ideas’ but ‘spoke for those millions of Americans who had begun their lives as hired workers’
What happened when Lincoln was elected?
7 southern states seceded from the Union.
He initiated hostilities (repossessed Fort Summer in South Carolina).
4 states seceded.
What did Lincoln declare in March 1861?
He would not ‘interfere with the institution of slavery’
What did Lincoln do when General John C Fremont in Missouri declared martial law?
- demanded that slaves in opposing states were freed
- Took it back out of fear for Union slave states.
Wendell Phillips criticism of Lincoln?
he was a ‘pawn’ for black abolitionist interests
Confiscation Act
Freedom of slaves in states fighting for union.
