what was the American Colonization Society? Why America's Battle Lines Matter | The New Republic The Antebellum South As abolitionism gathered strength, white Southerners repositioned themselves from an acceptance of slavery as a necessary evil to defending it as a positive good. The cover of the Saturday, April 23, 1831 edition of The Liberator, a Boston, Massachusetts, abolitionist newspaper. slavery actually reduced their standard of living. Refer to each styles convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. In fact, the churches in many communities were biracial; although the slaves and their white masters did not mix with each other socially within the church, both worshipped there together (Boles 1994, p. 46). half were in the north and half were in the south, but many were in Louisiana. In their minds, slavery had been divinely sanctioned. slave labor was superior to Northern paid labor since slaves were outside, did not have to worry about unemployment or the economy, and they were cared for when sick or old, an 1836 measure supported by Southerners that was pushed through the House to require antislavery appeals to be postponed without debate; representative JQ Adams repealed it after 8 years. His wife, however, had inherited several slaves. What singing! I then predicted that it would commence as it has with this fanatical portion of society, and that they would begin their operations on the ignorant, the weak, the young, and the thoughtless and gradually extend upwards till they would become strong enough to obtain political control. The Antebellum South Why did southern states secede over slavery? Southerners referred to the founding doctrine of the U.S., the Declaration of Independence. Harriet Tubman: Tubman was a fugitive enslaved person. Maintaining slavery, many Southerners believed, was doing the slaves a favor. what was the main goal of early abolitionist societies? The Methodist Church, which had been founded in part on antislavery principles, followed suit in 1844 with the formation of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (Boles 1994, pp. If the South Had Won the Civil War, Slavery Could Have Lasted Until the 20th Century. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980. Get your fix of JSTOR Dailys best stories in your inbox each Thursday. ITHAKA. While many members of the Southern clergy (some of whom were men of national distinction) privately had questions about slavery, many others did notand in fact saw slavery as sanctioned by the Bible. "The Slavery Apologists I have seen them rock to and fro under the influence of their feelings, like a wood in a storm. I've since worked with schools and districts all over the country, helping them improve their curriculums and instruction methods. 1830s. The abolitionist movement emerged in states like New York and Massachusetts. few did because of the competition with slave labor, a former slave/the Barber of Natchez who owned slaves and property, no, they were prohibited from working in certain occupations and testifying against whites in court; they could be sold back into slavery; some states forbid their entrance, most forbid them from voting, and some forbid them from public schools, no, Congress outlawed it in 1808, but thousands were smuggled in. The sermon, which reads in part almost like the Declaration of Independence, notes that a nation "often has a character as well defined and intense as that of the individual" (Palmer 1860, p. 6). How did abolitionists in the North respond to Southern apologists? Early abolition (article) | Khan Academy In the enjoyment of these rights, religion demands he should be protected. They argued that inequality in society was inevitable. 27 Apr. James Russell Lowell, whose emotional balance was cited by a biographer as proof that abolitionists need not have been unstable, urged, in contrast to Garrison, that the world must be healed by degrees. Also of importance was the work of free Blacks such as David Walker and Robert Forten and formerly enslaved persons such as Frederick Douglass, who had the clearest of all reasons to work for the cause but who shared some broader humanitarian motives with their white coworkers. Hudson, Winthrop S. Religion in America. Many planters worked their land until it was exhausted. Help us keep publishing stories that provide scholarly context to the news. Enslavers, he argued, took care of the ignorantin Fitzhughs argument, the enslaved persons of the South. A. The war began because a compromise did not exist that could solve the difference between the free and slave states regarding the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in territories that had not yet become states. Abolitionists were a divided group. How did the Confederate Constitution differ from the U.S. Constitution? Not confined to a single church, early antislavery sentiment was common among Mennonites, Quakers, Presbyterians, Baptists, Amish, and other practitioners of Protestant denominations. "(Wilson 1980, p. 40). 910). In the mid-1800s, slave owners in the South believed in the chattel principle, or the belief that slaves were pieces of moving property and therefore would always belong to their owners. What Are The Hot Pools In Yellowstone Called. Recent post: Who Is The Catholic Bishop Of South Dakota? The role of the church in the Civil War and the events leading up to it was primarily one of moral guidance. immigrants; it was better to pay someone than to risk losing an investment, not really; they had minimal protection from arbitrary murder or unusually cruel punishments and some states prohibited the sale of children under 10. did authorities enforce laws that benefited slaves? it was punishable by death, but juries usually acquitted them, the only person to be executed for smuggling slaves; he was executed in 1862. who was responsible for doing the more dangerous jobs in the south? Our negroes are not only better off as to physical comfort than free laborers, but their moral condition is better. Escaped from slavery to become one of the most . Proslavery theology persisted because religious arguments had situated slavery amidst other forms of household order and had relied upon widely accepted views of womens subordination as a corollary to slaves deprivation of rights. Southern Christians not only kept their antebellum worldview, they reaffirmed it as they helped rebuild the legal and social structures of white supremacy after terrorism and Northern indifference defeated Reconstruction. In the South, however, clergy were confronted with trying to defend slavery. Abolition did poorly at the polls. The Virginian George Fitzhugh contributed to the defense of slavery with his book Sociology for the South, or the Failure of Free Society (1854). Was slavery the reason for the Civil War? no, by 1850, less than 2,000 Southerners owned over 100 slaves and were usually politicians and aristocrats, yes, about 75% in 1860; they were mainly subsistence farmers who concentrated on corn and hogs. Myth of the Lost Cause-America's Most Successful Propaganda - History In which way did the richest plantation families resemble a traditional landed aristocracy? I've worked with students of all ages and backgrounds, and I love helping them unlock their full potential. being unable to own or operate small businesses. ." The prominent differences between the two were that the Confederate Constitution sought different guarantees of states rights and protected slavery as an institution. We publish articles grounded in peer-reviewed research and provide free access to that research for all of our readers. New York: Viking, 2006. How did southern opinion about the morality of slavery change during the 1830s? (Palmer 1860, p. 8). This belief illustrated the importance of the states rights argument to the southern states. Gale Library of Daily Life: American Civil War. . ." Resistance to and the Defense of Slavery - CliffsNotes . By that time, American abolitionists had realized the failure of gradualism and persuasion, and they subsequently turned to a more militant policy, demanding immediate abolition by law. But a number of factors combined to give the movement increased momentum, particularly as abolitionisms cause became caught up in the undercurrents of sectionalism. Washington, D.C. The Confederate Constitution made alterations of individual rights easier than under the U.S. Constitution. Southern apologists claimed the master-slave relationship was more humane than employer-worker relationships because. In the 1840s and 50s, Northerners and Southerners took increasingly adamant stands on the question of permitting or outlawing slavery in new Western territories, a matter with the potential to alter the regional balance of power in the country. Figure 1. a informal network of people that helped fugitive slaves make their way to the North, Most southern planters considered their slaves to be. Why Did So Many Christians Support Slavery? | Christian History D. They wanted a gradual end to slavery in the South. On the other hand, abolitionist arguments against slavery challenged proslavery apologists to push slave evangelization: If slavery was to be defended as a positive good, the slaves had to be converted to Christianity and master-slave relations had to be conducted along biblical lines. Having split from co-denominations in the North over the theological justification of slavery in the 1840s, southern Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian . 6 (June 1860): 401409. To maintain the existing relations between the two races, inhabiting that section of the Union, is indispensable to the peace and happiness of both. 1011). They argued that slaves lived in better conditions than factory workers. Defenders of the institution also lashed out directly at abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison for daring to call into question their way of life. A common explanation is that the Civil War was fought over the moral issue of slavery. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. . In his famous thanksgiving sermon in New Orleans in November 1860, the Presbyterian minister Benjamin Morgan Palmer (18181902) stated bluntly, "I throw off the yoke of this union as readily as did our ancestors the yoke of King George III, and for causes immeasurably stronger than those pleaded in their celebrated declaration" (Palmer 1860, p. 14). Leader of the army that wiped out the Texans who were defending the Alamo. Extolling "our faith that the negro is one blood with us," Thornwell goes on to admit that slavery itself may not be a perfect system: "Slavery is a part of the curse which sin has introduced into the world and stands in the same general relation to Christianity as poverty, sickness, disease and death. Southern proslavery arguments did NOT include the belief that slavery was. Its pages featured firsthand accounts of the horrors of slavery in the South and exposed, for many, the inhumane treatment of enslaved people on U.S. soil. In the 1830s, southern apologists in the South argued that slavery was a "positive good" because it allowed an elegant lifestyle for white elites and provided protection for inferior Africans. In the North, the abolitionist cause was the driving force behind the message from religious institutions and theologians.