Chapter 11 The Peculiar Institution

Explain how important slavery was to the national economy and the emergence of the United States as a great power?

Slavery was important to the national economy because slaves worked in cotton plantations, which cotton had replaced sugar as the world’s major crop produced by slave labor. Since cotton was sold world wide, the slaves were a necessity and they needed more slaves to make more cotton. If there was more cotton to be sold, then the nations economy will prosper and that will make the United States into a great powerful country.

Describe slave culture, explaining the similarities and differences among various regions.

The slaves culture originated, obviously, from African culture. It was shown in their music, dance, religious worship, and their remedies to diseases. The slaves in the United States had a culture binded by two others, the African traditions and their American values and experiences. In the Caribbean and Brazil, most slave cultures were just African traditions, since the slave trade continued in the nineteenth century.

Why did many white southerners support slavery even when they did not actually own any slaves?

The white southerners that did not own any slaves supported slavery because they believed that their economic and personal freedom rested on slavery.

What meanings of freedom were most important to the slaves?

At the time, most blacks were freed already. The most important things were the little things. Free blacks just wanted the same rights as a fellow white man. Blacks had few economic opportunities and they weren’t allowed to vote. They were prohibited from owning dogs, firearms, and/or liquor. Blacks had a lot of restrictions.

What forms of slave resistance were practiced in the American South?

One form of resistance was individual forms of rebellion. That was the most common form of rebellion and it was just sabotaging their masters’ things like the rails, tools, fences, boats, etc., and even thefts of food. Another form of slave resistance was rebelling in a physical way. A group of slaves eventually took over a ship that was transporting them to be sold and they eventually gained their freedom after taking over “The Amistad”.  Another uprising was Nat Turner’s Rebellion in which over 80 slaves killed 60 white people in a form of slavery resistance.