Social Studies Notes for Unit One

Description of the North and the South during the Antebellum Period

North:

Farmers began to industrialize, using machinery to become more productive.  They produced more and became an economic powerhouse.  Even though the climate was colder, the growing season shorter, and the soil was rocky, they had more success than southern farmers.  Products were made cheaper and faster.  Factories and mills opened and the railroads were used for shipping.  There were better roads and the railroads provided a less expensive way to deliver products.  Steamboats were also used.  The coastline (Boston) had bays and harbors for fishing and shipbuilding.  The black northerners were free but not equal.  They worked as laborers and servants.  They had to go to separate schools and were not treated with equal rights.  The white northerners mostly lived on farms near cities next to factories or railroad tracks.  Children were expected to help with harvesting.  Most of the northerners were against slavery.

 South:

The south relied on agriculture.  Crops were grown to sell and slaves were used to plant and harvest crops.  They were treated harshly.  Cotton, tobacco, sugar and rice were important crops.  White southerners were plantation owners who made a living off the land.  The soil was rich and the growing season was long.  There were mild winters and long, hot, humid summers.  Towns were built along the rivers.  Products were shipped using water travel.  Slaves were used as cooks, carpenters, blacksmiths, nurse maids/nannies, and most were field hands.  Wealth was measured by how much land and how many slaves farmers owned. 

Sojourner Truth was born into slavery in New York but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826.  She was the first black woman to win a case against a white man (trying to recover her son).  She is famous for her speech “Ain’t I a Woman” which dealt with woman’s rights.  She helped recruit black troops for the Union army.  She tried to get land grants for blacks.

 Frederick Douglas was a former slave and human rights leader.  He was the first black citizen to hold a US government rank.  His father was white and his mother died when he was 8.  He learned to read and write and became a preacher to slaves.  When he was 20 years old he escaped and wrote speeches and a newspaper speaking against slavery.  He recruited blacks for the Union army.

 The Grimke Sisters were white women who wanted to end slavery and racial discrimination.  They were from a wealthy family, and they saw firsthand how poorly slaves were treated.  They even taught their own personal slaves how to read.  They were smart, but back during this time women were not allowed to go to college.  They gave speeches and wrote articles promoting an end to slavery and discrimination.

William Lloyd Garrison was a white abolitionist who wrote a newspaper called The Liberator.  He wanted an immediate end to slavery and was a voice for women’s rights.  He wrote under a different name for protection.  He served jail time for publishing slave traders’ stories.  He even burned a copy of the constitution because it had a compromise putting slavery in it.

 

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 came about because of tensions between pro-slavery and antislavery factions within the US Congress and across the country.  Slavery was a use issue.  There were 22 states, equally divided between slave and free states.  This compromise was to let Missouri be a slave state but allow Maine in as a free state.  It also drew an imaginary line between free and slave regions.  Southerners did not believe congress could make laws regarding slavery.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a book by Harriet Beecher Stowe, showed the harsh reality of slavery and is regarded as one of the major causes of the Civil War.  The store follows the hard and unfair lives of two slaves.

 

The Compromise of 1850 was passed to defuse confrontation between slave and free states.  It was over land gotten during the Mexican American War.  It admitted California as a free state.  Texas surrendered its claim on New Mexico.  Utah and New Mexico territory could decide whether or not to allow slavery.  It did not say that slavery was banned in new states.

Preston Brook’s attack on Sumner was when he attacked Senator Sumner with a cane.  This brutal beating raised tensions and led to the Civil War.  Northerners hated Brooks, but southerners looked at him as a hero.

The Kansas Nebraska Act created territories of Kansas and Nebraska with good farmland.  It repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820.  It allowed white males to decide by popular vote whether or not to allow slavery in each character.   The purpose was to make a feasible Midwestern transcontinental railroad.  It needed farmers as customers.

 John Brown’s Raid was when abolitionists seized the US Armory at Harper’s Ferry.  They killed five men who supported slavery.  John Brow wanted to establish a colony for runaway slaves.  Brow was eventually hanged for treason.  He was known as a martyr, a hero murdered for his belief that slavery should be abolished.

The Dred Scott Case was about a slave who sued for his freedom and that of his wife and two daughters.  He said they had lived in Illinois and the Wisconsin territory for four years where slavery was illegal so they should be free.  The court decided that African Americans weren’t US citizens so they could not file a lawsuit.  This decision created a public outrage and increased tensions between northern and southern states and led to the civil war.