Slave Narrative Terms:
1. David Walker: 1796-1830, a black abolitionist whose radical literature such as Appeal helped the North become more active in the abolition movement. He is generally under credited for his contribution.
2. Nat Turner: 1800-1831, a slave who led a rebellion in Southampton County Virginia in 1831 going house to house killing whites and freeing slaves, until the rebels had gained around 70 slaves and free blacks. With 60 white deaths and 100 black deaths, this rebellion was the largest uprising with the largest number of fatalities until the Civil War.
3. American Colonization Society: A society for freed blacks that was created in 1816 to provide for blacks to return to Africa, establishing the nation of Liberia with a total of 13000 freed slaves taking advantage of the offer.
4. William Lloyd Garrison: 1805-1873, a prominent new England abolitionist whose editorial position at the newspaper The Liberator as well as his creation of the American Anti-Slavery Society allowed him to spread his abolitionist ideas.
5. Grimke Sisters: Sarah(1792-1873) and Angelina(1805-1879), two sisters from south Carolina who used their experiences on their fathers plantation to show the unrighteous ways of slavery and female subordination. They were the first females to publicly reform.
6. Elijah Lovejoy: 1803-1837, a Presbyterian minister who was initially the editor of an antijacksonian newspaper The St. Louis Observer, criticizing slavery and different church denominations. After facing pro-slavery attacks, he moved to Alton, Illinois, where he setup another anti-slavery newspaper. Then pro-slavery mobs attacked his warehouse and killed him, making him into an abolitionist martyr.
7. African Ghost Folklore: in African folklore, the spirits of ancestors was very important, allowing the living to learn from the wisdom of past generations. ANYBODY ELSE CAN ADD ANYTHING?
8. Sojourner Truth: 1797-1883, born Isabella Baumfree as a slave, escaped slavery in 1826 with her daughter. She was an important abolitionist and womens rights activist, and also helped recruit black soldiers during the civil war.
9. Gabriel Prosser: 1776-1800, a slave blacksmith whose rebellion in Virginia was foiled before it came into practice in 1800; he along with 25 of his co-conspirators were hanged, and black rights to education and work were restricted.
10. Compromise of 1850: a legislative bill proposed by Henry Clay and Stephen Douglas in 1850 that would give texas the panhandle region, while making texas give up its claim toNew Mexico; admit California as a free state; the new mexico and Utah territories would be allowed to choose whether or not they would be slave or free; the fugitive slave act was written; and allowed slavery in Washington dc.
11. Denmark Vessey: 1757-1822, a slave who bought his way to freedom after winning the lottery. He became a prominent member of the African Methodist episcopal church and began plotting a massive slave insurrection. Authorities found out and arrested him before it could happen, sentencing him to death. His name became a battle cry for abolitionists and black military regiments.
12. Lydia Maria Child: 1802-1880, a female abolitionist, female rights activist, indian rights activist, journalist, and leading figure in the Unitarian religion.
13. Fugitive slave law: passed as part of the compromise of 1850, it said that any runaway slave captured in a free state must be returned to the slave owner. It led to bountyhunters to prowl the North in search of fugitive slaves and also was a big component in the creation of the underground railroad.
14. Harriet beacher stowe: 1811-1896, a female abolitionist and author of the influential book Uncle tom’s Cabin which depicted slave life and energized abolitionist sentiments in the North.
15. John brown: 1800-1859, a fiery abolitionist who led anti-slavery armed raids in the bleeding Kansas crisis of 1856, where brown’s men alone killed 5 men (known as the Pottawatomie Massacre). After that, he created a slave insurrection in Harper’s Ferry VA where he raided a federal arsenal with the intent of arming the slaves, killing 7 whites and injuring many more. Robert E Lee led a force of marines and militiamen to capture brown and he was later hanged.
16. Theodore Parker: 1810-1860, he was a leading transcendentalist, abolitionist, and reforming member of the Unitarian church. His work as an abolitionist would aid in the speeches of Abe Lincoln and MLK.
17. Hinton Helper: 1829-1909, he was a critic of slavery who lived in the south. He wrote books such as the impending crisis of the south, which said that slavery actually harmed the economy of the south overall because it took away the initiative of non-slaveholders. The south hated him so much that they created “helperism” to describe people like him.
18. George Fitzhugh: 1806-1881, he was a social theorist who published racist theories about the incompetence of slaves to live on their own in his books Slavery Justified and Cannibals All!
19. Dred Scott: 1795-1858, he was born into slavery. He sued for his and his family’s freedom after he moved from the slave state of Missouri to the free territories of Illinois and then Minnesota. The supreme court ruled against him, saying that people of African ancestry had not the right to citizenship according to the diversity of citizenship rules, so he could not legally sue in a federal court. They ruled that Scott’s living outside of Missouri, which should have given him freedom according to the Missouri compromise, was unconstitutional bc it deprived scott’s master of his property.
20. Wendell Phillips: 1811-1884, he was an abolitionist, native American rights activist, and brilliant orator. He went so far as to boycott sugar and cotton so as not to support slavery.
21. Middle Passage: the transatlantic portion of the Columbian exchange, where slaves were transported by the millions (about 9-15 million) to plantations in the Americas. About 3-5 million died on the voyage.
22. King Cotton: a slogan from the southern US that said that the south could be economically successful as an independent nation bc they could export their cash crop of cotton, upon which all European nations depended for textiles, to Britain and france in exchange for military assistance.
23. Theodore Weld: 1803-1895, one of the beginning creators of the abolitionist movement in the 1830s-1840s. he wrote American Slavery as it is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses, upon which harriet beecher stowe’s Uncle tom’s cabin was based. His dedication lasted until the 13th amendment was added to the constitution.
24. John Henry: a tall tale of a man named john henry, who was the fastest steeldriver for railroad construction. When the owner of the rail line buys a machine to do his job, john challenges the machine to a race in order to preserve his and his colleagues’ jobs. John wins but dies from exhaustion, showing the tragedy of modernization and giving strength to the working class and black americans.
25. Harriet Jacobs: 1813-1897, an ex-slave writer who became an abolitionist and wrote Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, which was the first autobiography about slave life and revealed the sexual harassment and abuse that female slaves had to endure.
26. Ostend Manifesto: 1854, a document demanding that the US could buy cuba from spain following california’s annexation. It was written in Ostend, Belgium by pierre soule, james Buchanan, and john mason. Soule leaked the information to the public, so the north rallied against it because it wanted to admit cuba as a slave state, causing turmoil for the pierce administration.
27. New England Emigrant Aid Company: a movement created by Eli Thayer after the Kansas Nebraska Act that shipped people from massuchusetts to the Kansas territory in order to make Kansas come into the union as a free state.
28. Underground railroad: a system of safehouses throughout the US and into Canada, where escaped slaves would hide to escape slavery.
29. John C. Calhoun: 1782-1850, a south Carolinian congressman from 1811 til 1850. He was one of the war hawks of the war of 1812, a nationalist, modernizer, centralist, and protective tariffs. In 1840, his idealogy changed to one of a states rights, free trade, secessionist, limited government, and nullification. He served as inspiration to secessionists just before the civil war.
30. Emancipation proclamation: 1863, written by Lincoln to free the slaves of all places that were enemies of the US if they did not return to US control by jan 1, 1863. It freed most of the slaves, but did not compensate the owners or give the freed blacks citizenship, angering the south and northern democrats. The thirteenth amendment fully completed the goal of the emancipation proclamation in 1865.
31. Mountain whites in the south: the poor whites of the Appalachian mountains who were so isolated from the rest of the south that they did not own slaves and were even abolitionists. They retained many European customs bc of their isolation and created a blend of Scottish and irish music that we call bluegrass.
