AP U.S. History – Unit 6 – Westward Expansion: The Economic and Social Issues (1790-1860)

Chapter 16: The South and the Slave Controversy

Enduring Understanding: Social, political, religious, international, technological, and economic issues contributed to the growth of the United States in the early 1800s. While there was conflict abroad, political partisanship, economic growth, and social and religious movements at home developed the American character.

Concepts: Partisanship, Judicial Review, Internationalism, Isolationism, the Second Great Awakening, Abolitionism, Feminism, Industrialization, Expansionism, Nationalism, Nativism, Universal Male Suffrage, Women’s Suffrage

Topic/Take-Away: The explosion of cotton production fastened the slave system deeply upon the South, creating a complex, hierarchical racial and social order that deeply affected whites as well as blacks.

Topic/Take-Away: The economic benefits of an increasing production of cotton due to the cotton gin and slavery was shared between the South, the North, and Britain. The economics of cotton and slavery also led to bigger and bigger plantations, since they could afford the heavy investment of human capital.

Topic/Take-Away: The emergence of a small but energetic radical abolitionist movement caused a fierce proslavery backlash in the South and a slow but steady growth of moderate antislavery sentiment in the North. Academic Language to Know • Eli Whitney • “Cotton Kingdom” • Planter aristocracy • Sir Walter Scott • “Poor white trash”/“hillbillies”/“crackers” • Free blacks • Sold “down the river” • • Denmark Vesey (1822) • Nat Turner (1831) • Abolitionism • American Colonization Society (1817) • Liberia (1822) • British emancipation (1833) • Theodore Dwight Weld • • /The Liberator (1831) • American Anti-Slavery Society (1833) • Wendell Phillips • David Walker • Sojourner Truth • Martin Delaney • Frederick Douglass • Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy (1837) • “Free-soilers”

Mr. M.A. Rivera Unit 6 – Chapter 16 –Introduction Page 1 of 2

AP U.S. History – Unit 6 – Westward Expansion: The Economic and Social Issues (1790-1860)

Guided Reading Questions

1. How did Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin spark the rise of slavery and improve the economy in the north and south of the U.S.? Why did the south believe that if civil war would ever break out, England would support it instead of northerners?

2. What was the planter aristocracy, its characteristics, and how was it indicative of the role of women in the south?

3. How did cotton affect the land it was planted on, what resulted from it, and how did it form a one-crop economy that raised tensions between the north and south?

4. What fragment of the southern population whites had no slaves, what were some of the nicknames used to describe them, why did they defend slavery?

5. What were conditions like for free blacks in the U.S. in the early 1800s? Why were most blacks freed in the north, why were those freed in the south free, and what were working and social conditions like for each in the north and south?

6. What year was slave importation banned, what caused the slave increase, why were the slave majorities in the deep south (like South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana), and what were conditions like with regard to procreation and auctioning?

7. What was life like for slaves in captivity in the early 1800s with regard to family, living conditions, and other more immediate social conditions like marriage?

8. In what ways did slaves jeopardize their masters’ economic ventures, what were some of the more famous rebellions in the early 1800s (including Denmark Vesey’s and Nat Turner’s), and how successful were they in achieving abolition?

9. What were some of the roots of abolitionism from the early 1800s, what were they sparked by, and who were some of the key actors in the movement?

10. Who were Williams Lloyd Garrison, Soujourner Truth, and Frederick Douglass and how did they support the abolitionist movement, specifically?

11. How did Southerners respond the abolitionist movement and what kinds of arguments did they use for the continuity of slavery?

Mr. M.A. Rivera Unit 6 – Chapter 16 –Introduction Page 2 of 2