November 12, 2008 Notes

Racist Split: North vs South

• Southern schools taught that whites were superior to blacks
• Northern Whigs began to question racial barriers
• A split grew between hardcore Christians and the lighter protestants grew over treatment of race
• By 1804 every state had taken some gradual form of emancipation towards slaves
• By 1830 there were scarce numbers of slaves in the north
• northern free blacks tended to move to the cities and take on stable, low paying jobs such as a dockworker or some form of simple mastery
• Into the early 1830's emancipated blacks began to lose out of those jobs to whites
• A certain level of discrimination could be attributed to an economic depression in the late 1820's
• More and more blacks began to lose the right to vote
• Segregated schools took over, so blacks built several small schools of their own
• Racism worked its way to the political parties *whigs and democrats*
  Democrats were predominantly racist
• By the 1820's schools incorporated racism into their curriculum, using "scientific facts" to prove that whites and blacks are different species and they were unfit to be citizens in the U.S.
• Whigs opposed racism and supported black suffrage
• Before 1830, only Quakers and a few methodists and baptists thought of slavery to be a moral issue

• The only organized opposition to slavery before 1831 was the American Colonization Society founded in 1816

-they proposed gradual, compensated (to the slave owner), emancipation
-they wanted to send the slaves to Liberia in Africa which was largely opposed by southern plantation owners
-many blacks did not like the proposal in the first place because they did not want to leave America

• Other countries in Latin America began to free their slaves
• In 1830 Britain ended slavery in the Caribbean islands
• The 1820's-1830's introduced the abolitionist groups which fought for black rights
• William Lloyd Garrison published the Liberator an abolitionist paper which condemned slavery and demanded immediate emancipation for blacks
• Garrison helped to form the American Anti Slavery Society which demanded full rights for blacks
• In 1835 the Society began a postal campaign that called on congress for emancipation and to abolish slave trade
• Congress got really annoyed with them so they came together with southern democrats and whigs to pass the Gag Rule saying the abolitionist letters would not be acknowledged and they would not discuss slavery
• All the slave movements springing up influenced several women's movements to arise
• The women in the abolitionist movement said they deserved the same rights
• A women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, NY was the sight of where they signed the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions that said all men AND women were created eqal