These will be your assignment in lieu of outline notes from the text. I strongly encourage you to outline the text anyway for your own use, but I will not be grading your outline notes this time. These are due on Tuesday, October 19 at the beginning of class.
Make sure you are specific in your answers.
1. How did the dominance of cotton affect the economies of the North, South, and West? Why was the North resented economically by Southern planters?
2. What were the ecological as well as the economic consequences of cash-crop agriculture centered on “King Cotton?” Why were Southerners of all types referred to in your text as “Slaves of the Slave System?”
3. By 1860, what was the dollar value of slaves in the South, and how had their distribution shifted geographically since 1820? The maps on pp. 354 and 355 will help.
4. Explain the stratification of the Southern white population. By 1860 what percentage of the white population owned no slaves? What conclusions can you draw from this?
5.Why would whites who had no hopes of ever owning slaves be the most ardent proponents of slavery? How was the “American dream” twisted in Southern society?
6. What was life like for free blacks in the South? What was life like for free blacks in the North? What were “mulattos?”
7. How did the conditions of slavery affect African American religious and family life?
8. What were the most common forms of black resistance to slavery?
9. Who were Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner? What happened to them?
10. Who were the main leaders of the abolitionist movement? How did African Americans themselves take part in abolitionism?
11. Describe the differences on goal between groups like the American Colonization Society and people like the American Anti-Slavery Society?
12. What was the “black belt” and where was it?
13. How did pro-slavery Southern whites justify slavery?
14. How did Southern Congressmen attempt to halt any criticism of slavery in the halls of Congress or through the US mail?
15. How did the furor over abolitionism flare up in the St. Louis metropolitan area?
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