Slavery

WHY DID IT
HAPPEN?

In the beginning..
Slavery was used in America for the free labour it

provided for Americans. America was a young

country, the white English people who went there
often died because they didnt know how to find food
and the crops they planted died..

Question: Are there any similarities between white

English who went to America and white English who

went to Australia?

Did slavery always exist?

Africans and other nations had slaves before

Americans introduced slavery, however slaves

became a part of the family and slavery was not
based on skin colour.

Activity: Locate a map and find 3 countries that had

slaves (or have slaves nowadays) apart from

America.

The origins of slavery

In the beginning black slaves were treated more like

white indentured servants, in that they were judged

by religion (they had to be Christian) and they had
the opportunity to buy their freedom after working
for a certain length of time.

Questions: What is an indentured servant?

How is an indentured servant different from a slave?

Lower classes unite.

After several years whites and blacks were united as a

lower socio-economic group and the wealthy landowners became less reluctant to grant them freedom.
Some authors believe that the wealthy classes were
afraid blacks and whites would unite and uprise against
them so they created a division based on colour.
After that African-Americans were treated as inferior to
whites. Slavery was based on colour of skin.
Activity: Find a case study of another country that has
tried to divide people on religious, cultural or ethnicity.

The American Revolution

The American Revolution happened because the English

who came to America and had become Americans found it

unfair that England was reaping the profits of their hard
work.
England supported North America and the new Americans
fought from the South.
The English and the Americans used African- Americans
throughout the revolution to fight with both sides promising
freedom after the war had ended to the African-Americans.
Activity: Look up the American revolution, find out why it
started and who was involved.

The Fourth of July.

With the help of African-Americans the Americans

finally achieved independence. This day of

independence became known as the 4th of July.
In later years African-Americans no longer celebrated

this day, as Americans would not allow them to leave

their homes and participate in the celebrations. This led
to African-Americans viewing the Fourth of July as a
whites only celebration.
Activity: Find out exactly what happened on the 4 th of
July.

The end of the American revolution

After the war ended, African Americans hoped that their

conditions would improve; however many Americans

believed that slavery had to continue for America to
continue to be a wealthy country.
Conditions were worse in the South that the North as the
Northern states the African-Americans were putting
more pressure for freedom and were creating revolutions.
Activity: Locate a map of North and South America and

find 3 differences between the way the North and South

viewed slavery.

Revolutions
Small revolutions included burning houses down,

refusing to work etc.

The Northern states like New York realised that
treating African Americans so badly would create
greater problems in the future as the AfricanAmericans would seek revenge and retribution for the
way they had been treated.
The South was a different story.
Activity Google New York slavery and find out about
how slaves were treated in New York in the 1800s.

The cotton gin

A school teacher Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin1793, ( a

machine used to get cotton from the cotton plants).

Those in charge of the South realised that to produce the most
amount of cotton they would need slaves to ensure the
greatest profits were made.
Slavery became even stricter with big penalties for slaves who
ran away. Slaves were put in chains, taken from families as
soon as they reached an age that they could be of use to a
business. Mothers sometimes preferred that their children did
not live rather than living a life of slavery.
Activity: Find out how much money was made from the cotton
gin and how many slaves were used in the process.

Conditions worsened
As time went on, African-Americans continued to fight

for freedom.
Over time more and more white Americans recognised
that slavery was inhumane and began to help AfricanAmericans fight for their freedom.
At the same time new laws in the South were introduced
to prevent slaves from running away.
African-Americans got together to organise beatings,
killings to show whites they wouldnt be treated this way.
They were all eventually caught and publically hung.
Over time the injustices that African-Americans
experienced led to the civil war.

The origins of the civil war

The Declaration of Independence which happened after the

American Revolution gave many people in America hope that slavery

would end.
However the South was still dependent on slavery to run their

plantations whereas the North did not have this dependence on

slaves.
Watch Gone with the Wind.
Look at the Declaration of Independence,
http://
www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html
Why did this give many people hope that slavery would be abolished?

North and South- different opinions

Many people in the North were more progressive in

their thinking. Many people who wanted to abolish

slavery were divided on the issue; some believed that
Africans should be returned to Africa.
Many African-Americans were against this idea as they
felt that they helped America achieve most of their
financial success and they wanted the right to live in
America freely.
Google: William Lloyd Garrison he edited and
published anti-slavery articles in Northern newspapers.

Many people who wanted to abolish slavery believed that it was

morally evil.
Doctor..when the plague broke out in ..many people believed

that African Americans were immune to the plague (it was

caused by mosquitos and the Plague stopped when winter came).
The African- Americans helped white communities by being
nurses, removing dead bodies etc.
Instead of being grateful to African-American sfor helping many
white people that recovered said that the African-Americans
stole from them and took advantage of their illness. This led to
increased anger among African-Americans.

Why did the civil war happen?

The civil was largely about Southern states versus Northern states.
In the South, large plantations (cotton or tobacco) had an owner

(like a King in England).

Slavery was seen as a way of life in these states and there was very
little social mobility- meaning that your family determined your
life in the future (if you came from a poor family you would stay
poor).
Increasingly, Southern states were demanding to be treated
different from the North (for example not having certain taxes
imposed). The political leaders in Washington disputed this, as
America was meant to be a united country.
Watch Gone with the Wind Rhett Butler

The North
Northern states were multicultural and multiracial.

New York, Washington, Boston many people had

new ideas and it didnt matter who your parents were
(for example Samuel Colt who invented the gun left
15 million in his will despite coming from a poor
family).
The North was more against slavery than the South.
Google Samuel Colt and North America in the

1800s. Compare this with the South.

Divide over how to deal with slavery.

By 1840, organized antislavery was split into two main

factions. William Lloyd Garrison and his supporters

believed that antislavery was a strictly moral and
religious movement, about the conscience of the nation.
In opposition to the Garrison were the political
abolitionists. They wanted to end slavery through the
political system and trying to elect antislavery candidates
were the most effective ways to bring it about.
Google
http://americanhistory.about.com/od/civilwarmenu/tp/
secessionevents.htm

The beginning of the Civil War

The abolitionists saw through the cataclysmic violence of the Civil

War.
The Thirteenth Amendment emancipated the slaves and the

Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments gave citizenship and civil

rights to freed blacks. But the Souths freedmen were abandoned by
the North in the 1870s, and they did not win back their rights for
nearly a century until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s
ended legal segregation and their exclusion from politics. Yet, like the
movement of antislavery for the equal treatment of Americans
regardless of color, civil rights as a whole has an extremely
complicated history of great victories but also major disappointments
and the fight for them still continues on different levels.

Confederate States versus Union states

By 1861, the people in the South believed that being part

of the Union might impact against them being able to

have slaves, so they withdrew from the Union and
formed the Confederate States.
Abraham Lincoln believed that having states withdraw
from the Union would eventually create a number of
states that would be against one another and that
America needed to be a strong country, united.
Activity: Find out which states were in the Union and

which states were in the confederacy.

February 1861 -- The South Creates a

Government.
At a convention in Montgomery, Alabama, the seven

seceding states created the Confederate Constitution,

a document similar to the United States
Constitution.
However the new Confederacy allowed each state to

have greater individual power.

Jefferson Davis was named provisional president of
the Confederacy until elections could be held.
Google the confederate constitution.

March 1861 -- Lincoln's Inauguration.

At Lincoln's inauguration on March 4, the new

president said he had no plans to end slavery in

those states where it already existed, but he also said
he would not accept secession. He hoped to resolve
the national crisis without warfare.
Look up the definition of secession

When was the Civil War fought?

The war began when Confederate warships

bombarded Union soldiers at Fort Sumter, South

Carolina on April 12, 1861. The war ended in Spring,
1865. Robert E. Lee surrendered the last major
Confederate army to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox
Courthouse on April 9, 1865. The last battle was
fought at Palmito Ranch, Texas, on May 13, 1865.
Click here for a Civil War timeline.
Google how the Civil War began.

Olaudah Equiano
The Atlantic slave trade was the largest forced migration of people by

sea in history.
First-person accounts of the Middle Passage are very rare. The
Middle Passage was the stage of the triangular trade in which
millions of people from Africa were shipped to the New World as part
of the Atlantic slave trade.
Olaudah Equianos first-person account recalls his terrifying journey
as an 11-year-old captive aboard a slave ship from Africa to Barbados
in 1756
How does Equiano end up as a slave? Recount how he goes from his

boyhood in West Africa to the Middle Passage. How does he

describe the Middle Passage? What factors might have contributed
to the brutal treatment of the slaves?

The Civil war

The North and the South were both fighting for

causes they believed in the Civil war.

The North seemingly held the advantage over the
South in military, economics and diplomatic balance
The war lasted for more than four years with a staggering

loss of more than 600,000 Americans dead.

What was the North fighting for and what was the South

fighting for. Explain advantages and disadvantages the

both sides possessed.

Lincoln
President Lincoln in March 1861. He served as the 16th President of the

United States, until his assassination in April 1865.

Seven slave states left the Union to form the Confederate States of America,
and four more joined when hostilities began between the North and South.
A bloody civil war then engulfed the nation as Lincoln vowed to preserve
the Union, enforce the laws of the United States, and end the secession.
Lincoln led the fight to get the 38th Congress to pass the Thirteenth
Amendment and abolish slavery. He used his political skills and his
immense power to sway the votes of reluctant Democratic congressman
towards acceptance of the Thirteenth Amendment.
Why did President Lincoln want to pass the Thirteenth Amendment to

abolish slavery? What were his motives and beliefs?

Why are the theories relating President Lincoln assassination?

Abolishment of slavery