Well hey there and welcome back to Heimler’s History. In these last videos we’ve been going through Unit 4 of the AP U.S. History curriculum, and in this video we’re going to talk about the lives and resistance of African Americans in the early republic. So get them brain cows ready because I’m about to milk them. Let’s get to it. So when we’re talking about the enslaved black population in the South, what we often hear about is the dehumanization and misery that defined their lives. And that is very true. But that’s not the whole story. In the midst of the dehumanization of slavery, enslaved people carved out a social identity and a rich culture which belonged to them despite the harsh conditions. So let’s consider both of those: the culture they created and the resistance in which they engaged. One cultural marker enslaved people claimed for themselves was their names. When a plantation owner bought these people, they gave them English names. But for many generations, many enslaved people continued to address each other by their African names as a way to sustain the memory of their culture and communal heritage. Enslaved people also kept alive their West African and Caribbean languages when they were among themselves. Additionally, they maintained their culture through the telling of folk tales, and music and dance that belonged to them apart from their slave owners. And as they carved this culture out for themselves, it was spread throughout the South as enslaved people from different plantations interacted with one another when they went to the cotton markets or when they married each other secretly. Also they maintained their own and in some cases, syncretized versions of religion. Some of the Africans who were Muslims continued the customs of praying to Allah and performing the demanded rituals, even if they were also required to attend Protestant churches on Sunday. Others eagerly embraced the Christian religion because of the powerful black preachers who combined culturally African and culturally American elements into their services like drums and dancing. Now all of this is important to understand because it keeps us from the assumption that the black experience under slavery was ENTIRELY defined by white masters. No: despite the dehumanization being leveraged against them by the institution of slavery, they resisted that dehumanization in all of these subtle ways. But those weren’t the only ways they resisted slavery. In some cases, they outright rebelled. Now it’ll be important for you to know that slave rebellions were among the greatest fears of the slave holding elite. And things were emphatically not helped on this account by the Haitian Revolution that ended in 1804 in which the enslaved population rose up and killed much of the white population and established a government of their own. And so as a result, white plantation owners went to extraordinary lengths to suppress much of the unique cultural expression developed by their enslaved workforce. And as it turns out, their fears were warranted as they discovered in 1831 during Nat Turner’s Rebellion. This was an organized slave revolt in Virginia led by an enslaved worker named Nat Turner. He was a spiritual man who believed that God had chosen him for a mission. And so in obedience to that vision, Turner and his followers began by killing his masters in Southampton County and then headed to other plantations to do the same. In the end, Turner and his followers had killed 57 white people and the next day the Virginia militia encountered the rebels and squashed the rebellion. Turner and 55 others believed to be his conspirators were hanged. And as a result of this, Virginia planters panicked and unleashed terror on an estimated 200 of their enslaved workers, beating all of them and killing many. Another example of rebellion was a mutiny on the Spanish slave ship Amistad in 1839. The hull of this ship was packed with enslaved people being transported from West Africa for sale in the West Indies. After the cook on the ship made a joke to the Africans that they were to be killed, salted, and cooked, one of the men somehow unshackled himself and then helped the others to get free. They ended up killing the cook and the ship’s captain. Once the ship reached the shores of the east coast of America, the Africans were incarcerated and awaited trial. It went to the Supreme Court in a case called United States v The Amistad and the enslaved Africans were represented by none other than John Quincy Adams. The court decided in favor of the rebels and set them free. Now as a result of all of this, the lives of enslaved blacks became increasingly difficult as their white owners sought to gain a stricter measure of control over them. Between 1820 and 1840 most Southern legislatures made it illegal to free a slave. Additionally it was deemed a crime to teach an enslaved person to read and write. And even more strictures like outlawing marriage between enslaved people and abolishing any access they had to the courts were also handed down. And the point is this. For many southern slave holders, the story they told themselves was that these enslaved people were not people at all, but rather more like farm animals. And as such, these enslaved people actually benefited from their slavery. But with all the resistance and rebellions we’ve just talked about, this became a much more difficult story to justify to themselves. Okay, that’s what you need to know about Unit 4 Topic 12 of the AP U.S. History curriculum. If you need help getting an A in your class and a five on your exam in May, making these videos, then subscribe and I shall oblige. Heimler out.