abolitionists – U.S. to 1877

November 6, 2013

Getting rid of problems for the people

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The reading for tomorrows class was interesting view of how Jackson destroyed the National Bank and Abolitionism. I personally thought it was crazy how Jackson appointed his secretary of the Treasury and quickly dismissed him from the position because he was unwilling to “remove the deposits without the assent of Congress” (208). I also think its an interesting point that the book brings up the “eighty thousand dollars” the bank spent against Jackson in the 1832 election (208). After reading this, I instantly wondered if that was the main reason Jackson had a problem with the Bank and wanted it removed at all. It was in fact in his favor to not be around because it was money that couldn’t be used to oppose him. I also thought it was interesting how Biddle tried to keep the fight going for supporters of the bank, and Jackson used the people to shift the blame to him. This gained support for Jackson as he made the businessmen think that the bank was their problem and Jackson was all in support of the people, and it made those who supported the bank look as if they don’t care about the people and they sacrificed the businesses that went under to keep their bank.

Another piece of the reading I found interesting was how it spoke on abolitionists. I feel like my classmates made a lot of good points when talking about abolitionists, but one that I felt was really well stated was how they talked about the divide in the movement itself and how that weakened the movement as a whole (http://sites.davidson.edu/his141/abolition-the-bank-and-jackson/). I also thought it was crazy how the movement spread across the country. Of course it was not well liked in a lot of places because it took money out of the people’s pockets, but it still started more groups and gained people’s support on the fact that enslavement of other humans was wrong. I feel like this section leading into labor unions and strikes was perfect because in my mind the abolitionists were basically a large labor union that had an effect in more places across the country.

November 5, 2013

Northern Resistance to Abolitionists

Much of Chapter 13 in both The Rise of American Democracy and Inhuman Bondage focus on the gradual steps America took towards abolitionism during the mid 19^th century. The most interesting part of the reading, to me, was learning about the hardships that northern abolitionists faced from fellow northerners during the 1830’s. The fight for abolitionism in America is so often characterized as a North vs. South battle that it’s easy to forget that during the early stages of the battle, northern abolitionist faced extreme adversity from their northern neighbors. Sean Wilentz does a great job of describing the pattern of violence towards northern abolitionists, including William Lloyd Garrison, a tremendously important player in the movement, who was forced to flee from a scheduled address in New York in 1833 (211). Wells King talks more about Garrison and abolitionism in America in this blog post (http://sites.davidson.edu/his141/american-abolition-liberation-or-genocide/). Garrison was not the only one who faced aggression either. Wilentz explains that havoc wreaking mobs that fought abolitionism sprouted up in Philadelphia, Hartford, Utica, Washington, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati in 1834 and 1835 (212). It was interesting to learn that most of these mobs were ran by political and social elites who “abhorred the abolitionists’ challenge to their own social authority” (213). To me, this suggests that the anti-abolitionists were less concerned with the issue of slavery and more concerned with having their political power threatened. Looking forward, it’ll be interesting to learn how in just two decades, the sentiment towards slavery in the north became so collectively negative that the country split and went to war.

The role of the President in this situation is also notable. Both authors touch on it in their respective chapters. Wilentz chides President Jackson for his inability or unwillingness to enforce the 1836 Post Office Law. In not enforcing the law, southern postmasters often did not deliver abolitionists tracts that argued the merits of ending slavery. Davis, the author of Inhuman Bondage argues that Jackson failed to enforce the law because he “greatly valued the South’s electoral advantage in counting three-fifths for purposes of representation” (261). These sections of each chapter emphasize the importance of the President in regards to the issue of slavery. It also shows how impactful having a President who leaned one way or another on the issue could be.

October 27, 2013

Paternalism in the American South

After the American Revolution, American society was characterized by strong ideas about and pride in their widespread freedom and yet the South was still home to thousands of slaves. The so called Peculiar Institution was, no doubt, economically imperative for the region through the nineteenth century; over 60 percent of cotton was grown in the American South (Davis 184). However as the debate between supporters of slavery and abolitionists intensified during the nineteenth century, slave owning southerners began to attempt to justify slavery by using the principles of the new nation.

People who supported slavery used ethnology in order to support the morality of slavery, claiming that the naturally inferior black race depended on the regulatory influence of whites to prevent the “progressive decline and decay” which would result if slaves were emancipated and left to fend for themselves (Davis 189-190). Slavery, therefore, possessed a quasi-paternalistic aspect which was unique to the American South. In fact, “several traders noted that American masters wanted above all to be ‘popular’ with their slaves – a characteristically American need that was probably rare in Brazil and the Caribbean” (Davis 195). I would argue that the American preoccupation with being liked by their slaves and being “paternalistic” was a result of the disparity between the institution of slavery and the principles of liberty and freedom which took hold of the nation during the revolution. Abolitionists in Great Britain often exploited this disparity in order to renounce slavery and the validity of Americas claims of being an equal society. The paternalism of southern slavery was a defensive reaction against this, attempting to integrate slavery into the new national rhetoric.

I found it interesting that Davis occasionally pulled from modern society in analogies dealing with slavery in nineteenth century America. These projections into the modern day sometimes clarified claims, such as Davis’ comment that “If slavery had persisted into the later twentieth century…one can only…imagine large corporate planters passing out ‘overseer evaluation forms’ to the slaves” (Davis 195-196). However, I question the applicability of these comparisons. In class we discussed the danger of applying modern systems of beliefs to peoples from the past who possessed completely different systems of beliefs and different circumstances. By drawing comparisons between nineteenth century America and modern America, without taking into account the evolution in moral thought which occurred, Davis is in danger of drawing conclusions from faulty evidence.