“Follow the Drinking Gourd,” by Richie

Havens, in Songs of the Civil War

Follow the drinking gourd,

Follow the drinking gourd,

For the old man is coming

just to carry you to freedom

Follow the drinking gourd

When the sun comes back

and the first quail calls,

Follow the drinking gourd,

For the old man is waiting

just to carry you to freedom

Follow the drinking gourd

The riverbank makes a very good road,

Dead trees show you the way,

Left foot, peg foot traveling on,

Follow the drinking gourd.

The river ends between two hills,

Follow the drinking gourd,

There's another river on the other side,

Follow the drinking gourd.

Where the great big river meets the little river,

Follow the drinking gourd,

The old man is waiting,

to carry you to freedom

If you follow the drinking gourd.

Monday, March 5th

Essay #2 due at the START of labs on March 15th or 16th

Remember to submit paper via blackboards Turn-It-In function before

labs and hard copy at the start of labs.

Failure to do both will result in a late penalty or not accepted at all.

Don’t forget to come into the American Heritage Review Room (173 A

SWKT) for help on papers and concepts

COMING SOON:

Open Lab Review on Saturday, March 17th from 10:00 am to 2:00

pm in 173A, 337, and 350 SWKT

Midterm #2: March 20th – 23rd

Tuesday, March 20th, Wednesday, March 21st (NO FEE)

Thursday, March 22nd -- $5 late fee

Friday, March 23rd -- $7 late fee – must have the test in hand by 11:00

am

A House Divided

Part 1

Unfinished Business of the

Founding

Slavery and Federalism

An “Empire of Liberty”

Northwest Ordinance of 1787

Louisiana Purchase, 1803

Why did the Founders fail

to end slavery?

“We have the wolf by the ears; and we can

neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice

is in one scale, and self-preservation in the

other.”

--Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

North vs South: Contrasting

Labor Systems

Industrial

Shift from artisan

production to mass

production

Huge influx of

immigrant laborers

Agricultural

Plantation agriculture

based on slave labor

North vs South: Contrasting

Ideologies

“Abolitionism”

Anti-slavery

movement

Pro-Slavery

Paternalism: Slavery

as a positive good

Kind masters cared

for slaves from

cradle to grave

Northern wage labor

a greater evil than

slavery

The “Peculiar Institution”:

The Southern View

“[Southern slavery has produced] the

highest toned, the purest, best

organization of society that has ever

existed on the face of the earth.” James Henry Hammond, SC Senator, 1836

“The negro slaves of the South are the

happiest, and, in some sense, the freest

people in the world.”

George Fitzhugh, 1854

Anti-Slavery crusaders:

Frederick Douglass

Sojourner Truth

Moving toward Disunion:

The Expansion of Slavery

The invention of the

cotton gin (Eli Whitney,

1793)

Could clean 50 lb

cotton/day (a ten-fold

increase over hand labor)

Cotton production

doubled each decade

after invention of the

cotton gin

The Political Expansion

of Slavery

The Missouri Compromise (1820)

Restricted slavery to the South

The Compromise of 1850

Allowed some slavery in territories

The Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)

Repealed Compromise of 1850, established

popular sovereignty in territories

Led to “Bleeding Kansas”

The Dred Scott decision (1856)

Denied Congress’ power to limit slavery

The Dred Scott case

Chief Justice Roger Taney defined slaves not as persons, but as property.

Black slaves were “regarded as beings of an inferior order and altogether unfit to associate with the white race ... and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

Roger Taney, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 1857

John Brown: Angel or Devil?

John Brown timeline

Pottowatamie Massacre, May 24, 1856

Harper’s Ferry Raid, Oct. 16-18, 1859

Execution, Dec. 1859

“I have been whipped, as the saying is, but I am sure

I can recover all the lost capital occasioned by the

disaster by only hanging a few moments by the

neck.”

--John Brown, Nov. 11, 1859, Charlestown, Virginia

John Brown: Martyr

John Brown of Ossawotomie, they led him out to die;

And lo! A poor slave-mother with her little child pressed nigh,

Then the bold, blue eye grew tender, and the harsh face grew mild,

And he stooped between the jeering ranks and kissed the negro’s child!

--John Greenleaf Whittier, 1859

John Brown: Terrorist “He said if a man stood

between him and what he considered right, he would take his life as coolly as he would eat his breakfast. His actions show what he is. Always restless, he seems never to sleep. With an eye like a snake, he looks like a demon.”

-- Widow of man killed at Pottawatomie, on John Brown

“Meteor of War,”

Rancid, 2000

John Brown set the tone he was a meteor in a guilty land

Abolitionist understand freedom to the despondent man

Grant said you're either one, a patriot or a traitor's son

It's a Sanguinary conclusion

A Sanguinary conclusion

Sanguinary conclusion..yeah

John Brown, (John Brown) John Brown, (John Brown) John Brown, (John Brown), yeah...

John Brown, (John Brown) John Brown, (John Brown) John Brown, (John Brown), yeah...

The Election

of 1860

Federalism

Do states have the right to secede?

iClicker quiz:

A) Yes

B) No

Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy

“The people of the states now

confederated became convinced the government of the United States had fallen into the hands of a sectional majority, who would pervert that most sacred of all trusts to the destruction of the rights which it was pledged to protect . . . They therefore determined to sever its bonds and establish a new confederacy for themselves. . . . Therefore we are in arms to renew such sacrifices as our fathers made to the holy cause of constitutional liberty.”

--Jefferson Davis, Inaugural Speech

“We must settle this question now,

whether in a free government the

minority have the right to break up the

government whenever they choose.”

-- Abraham Lincoln

“In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect, and defend it.’

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have been strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

--Abraham Lincoln, 1st Inaugural Address

The American Civil War

1861-1865

A catastrophe of epic

proportions Army deaths: 620,000

360,000 Union soldiers – 35%

260,000 Confederate soldiers – 61%

Total = 8% of men ages 13-43

Causes of death Disease: 2/3 of army deaths from disease:

typhoid, dysentery, pneumonia, scurvy

Combat: Clash of improved weaponry with old tactics

Total loss of life: 750,000 (including civilians), more than all other wars from Revolution to 1990 combined

The role of African-American

soldiers

“Contrabands”: Emancipation

Proclamation allowed Union to seize

slaves, employ them in Union army

“A Bit of War History: The Contraband, The

Recruit, The Veteran” by Thomas Waterman

Wood, 1866