Chapter 16 Apush

V. Free Blacks: Slaves Without Masters 1. By 1860, free Blacks in the South numbered about 250,000. 2. In the upper South, these Blacks were descended from those freed by the idealism of the Revolutionary War (“all men were created equal”). 3. In the deep South, they were usually mulattoes (Black mother, White father who was usually a master) freed when their masters died. 4. Many owned property; a few owned slaves themselves. 5. Free Blacks were prohibited from working in certain occupations and forbidden from testifying against whites in court; and as examples of what slaves could be, Whites resented them. 6. In the North, free Blacks were also unpopular, as several states denied their entrance, most denied them the right to vote and most barred them from public schools. 7. Northern Blacks were especially hated by the Irish, with whom they competed for jobs. 8. Anti-black feeling was stronger in the North, where people liked the race but not the individual, than in the South, were people liked the individual (with whom they’d often grown up), but not the race. VI. Plantation Slavery 1. Although slave importation was banned in 1808, smuggling of them continued due to their high demand and despite death sentences to smugglers 2. However, the slave increase (4 million by 1860) was mostly due to their natural reproduction. 3. Slaves were an investment, and thus were treated better and more kindly and were spared the most dangerous jobs, like putting a roof on a house, draining a swamp, or blasting caves. * Usually, Irishmen were used to do that sort of work. 4. Slavery also created majorities or near-majorities in the Deep
South, and the states of South Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana accounted for half of all slaves in the South. 5. Breeding slaves was not encouraged, but thousands of slaves were “sold down the river” to toil as field-gang workers, and women who