Crash Course U.S. History: Slavery

Introduction

• Host: John Green
• Topic: Slavery in U.S. History
  • A serious and impactful subject
  • Duration: 1619 to 1865
  • Legacy still impacts America today

The Slave-Based Economy

• Often linked to the Market Revolution
• Southern cotton crucial for Northern industrialization
  • Cotton textiles: first industrial products
  • 3/4 of world’s cotton from American South
• Northern involvement
  • Merchants, bankers, and insurance companies profited
  • Northern manufacturers sold cloth back to the South

Effects on the South

• Predominantly agricultural and rural
  • Few cities, mostly in the Upper South
  • South produced only 10% of the nation’s manufactured goods
• Lack of industry and railroads
  • Adverse effect in the Civil War

Population and Demographics

• By 1860, 4 million slaves in the U.S.
  • 1/3 of the Southern population
  • Most slaveholders owned five or fewer slaves
  • Majority of white Southerners didn't own slaves
• Yeoman farmers
  • Self-sufficient, poor, supported slavery
  • Racism provided legal and social status

Intellectual and Cultural Justifications

• Slavery seen as a necessary evil
  • Quote from Thomas Jefferson
• Some argued slavery was positive
  • Slaves supposedly benefited from care
  • John C. Calhoun's "positive good" speech
• Justifications included Biblical passages and Greek/Roman examples

The Reality of Slavery

• Coerced labor, intimidation, and brutality
• Louisiana law on slave obedience
• Conditions varied by plantation type
  • Task system on rice plantations
  • Gang labor on cotton plantations
• Brutality and dehumanization

Slave Resistance

• Forming families as a form of resistance
  • Importance of marriage and two-parent households
  • Religious faith focusing on liberation stories
• Learning to read and becoming preachers
  • Slave preachers led uprisings

The Mystery Document

• Document by Joseph Taper
  • Expression of resistance through running away

Escaping Slavery

• Many slaves ran away temporarily, some permanently
  • Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad
• Armed rebellion attempts
  • Gabriel's Rebellion, 1811 Louisiana uprising
  • Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner's Rebellion
• Harsh legal responses to uprisings

The Nature of Resistance

• Subtle forms of resistance
  • Work slowdowns, sabotaging, feigning ignorance
• Affirming humanity through family and faith

Conclusion

• Slavery was a system of dehumanization resisted by slaves
• Resistance contributed to making the Civil War inevitable
• Crash Course team involved in production and writing
• Encouragement to engage with related content and questions