The South in the Northern Mind

The South in the Northern Mind

By 1850:

•America had secured political independence (effectively twice)

•Established economic independence

•Declared cultural independence

•Had doubled in size twice (Louisiana & Mexican Cession)

•Poised to accomplish all it had ever boasted or dreamed of.

•BUT….self-destruction looms.

Major Questions

•Why by the 1850s had slavery come under such sustained and relentless attack in the North?

What North & South Shared

•Language

•Religion

•Economic system

•History

•Social system

•Political system

•Social structure

•Nationalism

•Political culture

•So how, sharing so much, could they come to blows? All knew, Lincoln said, that slavery was somehow the cause of the war. The tricky part is figuring out the somehow.

Economic Anti-slaveryism

•Prior to industrialization, society was hierarchically structured according to “natural” dependencies.

•The market revolution ushered in a drastic redefinition of work. Work was to be performed by self-motivated, economically-rational individuals who strove to improve their material self-interest in open competition.

•Therefore, slavery was bad economics and the South was an economic backwater. But this not a popular argument at the polls

Moral Anti-slaveryism

•Argued that slavery was morally wrong

•Came of age in 1830s because:

–Evangelicalism

–Romanticism

–New organization techniques and technologies

–Demographic shifts

–New class of bourgeois reform women

•But this not popular at the polls.

Political Anti-slaveryism

•Made anti-slavery viable at the polls

•Crusade against the privileged aristocrat—the planter—who was trying to take over the government. How?

–3/5 clause

–Gag rule

–Domination of the federal government

•But how was he a threat?

–He threatened to take black people into the west

Mexican War

•1821: Mexico establishes its independence from Spain

•1829: Mexico abolishes slavery

•1836: Annexation of Texas

•1845: U.S. annexes Texas

•1846: U.S. attempts to buy northern Mexico

•1846-1848: War; ends with Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo

•1848: Gold discovered at Sutter’s Mill

Rise of the Republican Party

•All three forms of anti-slaveryism, plus:

•For the economically secure:

–Federal funding for internal improvements

–Protective tariff for northern manufacturing

–Subsidies for railroads

•For the economically anxious: someone to blame:

–Catholics

–Planters

•Forged a winning synthesis: Free Soilers, ex-Whigs, abolitionists, Know Nothings. Ran its first president John C. Fremont in 1856; won 33% of the popular vote; needed only PA + 1 of IN or IL

•But also a new generation of slaves working to cast the planter as the villain

Bringing Down the “Slave Power”

•How did slaves resist?

–Physical resistance

–Economic resistance

–Psychological resistance

–Political resistance

•Slave narratives

–Causes of their popularity

–Effects of their popularity

•Humanized the slaves

•Countered the South’s portrait of slavery

•Cast the planter as the villain