Sample Student Research Project 2018: Journal
LITR
4328 American Renaissance / Model Assignments
Sample Student Research Project 2018:
Journal
Kirstyn Bullington
November 26, 2018
The Southern Argument
As I am preparing to become a teacher I
am noticing that certain aspects of America’s history are being censored or
omitted and therefore not being taught to students. One of the major aspects of
America’s history that seems to be purposely avoided is slavery. As I continue
to notice this in many classrooms, I got to thinking about how slavery was
taught to me and my peers. While it wasn’t necessarily avoided, it wasn’t
something that was talked about in grave detail. We were taught that it was
wrong, and a disgusting part of America’s history. If students are not being
taught what slavery is then we can almost guarantee that they couldn’t
acknowledge many of the arguments of the pro-slavery movement. I hate to admit
this, I knew that there were individuals that fought for slavery but I didn’t
know that there were many authors and leaders who fought tirelessly and believed
whole heartedly that slavery made America better.
One of the main reasons that I wanted to
research pro-slavery is because I don’t know very much about this topic. To me,
it’s important to teach all aspects of America’s history and this includes the
good, the bad, and the ugly. This research isn’t meant to change my views on
slavery, but an attempt to understand what pro-slavery leaders thought and
believed. Being a substitute in the Clear Lake area has also influenced my
desire to research this topic because it makes me sad for the younger
generations who aren’t being taught the complete history of America. I think
that it is of extreme importance to know not only one side of a topic, but to
gather information on both sides of the spectrum. I don’t want my future
students to have a narrow mind of history as so many students seem to be growing
up with. I want them to be exposed to all of America’s history and not just the
parts that present America in a positive light.
One of the main things I want to learn
is why was the fight to keep slavery in the South of such extreme importance.
Did it have to with religious reasons or was it more of an economical dilemma?
One of the few things that I know about slavery in the South is that slaves were
of vital importance to Southern plantations. However, I don’t understand why
that importance was more vital than human life and how slaves affected America
as a whole. I hope that I can learn not only these reasons but also about
individuals who contributed to the pro-slavery fight.
Pro-slavery: The Main Idea
The fight to keep slavery was a Southern ideal that not
only stated that the ownership of African Americans was ethical, but that it was
beneficial to not only the slaves but to America as a whole. A huge argument for
the South to keep slavery was that it produced a fruitful economy and if America
did away with slavery the economy would take a huge hit. Slaves played a huge
role in the Southern economy because of their labor within the cotton fields. If
slavery were to disappear not only would the cotton and tobacco fields dry out
and force Southern plantation owners to lose their fields and livelihood, but it
would produce complete chaos within America. Freeing the slaves would spread
unemployment throughout the nation and presumably produce uncontrollable chaos
as well. Slave holders believed that they were not only doing right economically
by holding slaves, but that they were taking care of the slaves by providing
them with meals and a place to live while they labored extensively.
In the early 1800s, many pro-slavery leaders couldn’t
envision America without a heavy reliance on cotton. Cotton was the most
important resource in the South and not only made Southern plantation owners
rich, but it allowed for trade throughout the world. In the article, “Why was
cotton ‘King’” by Henry Louis Gates explains why cotton was America’s best
selling export. With heavy reliance on cotton, slaves in part were free labor to
the South. In my opinion, cotton was the determining factor as to why
pro-slavery leaders were unwilling to free slaves. They had created a booming
economy for not only themselves, but America as well and they were unwilling to
part with such a life-altering resource. The slaves were of extreme importance
in making sure that cotton remained king in the South.
Pro-slavery leaders also believed that they were doing
the will of God as they held slaves within their plantations. It’s hard to
explain the religious argument of pro-slavery without talking about the effects
of the 2nd Great Awakening. This religious movement produced a
phenomenon called “camp-meetings” that swept across America in the early 1800s.
These meetings attracted huge crowds by encouraging an emotional individual
salvation, but also encouraging responsibility with a focus on family values.
All of this led anti-abolitionists to argue that slave
owners were Christians and only wanted to serve God by taking care of the poor.
We read in class portions of Frederick Douglass’s narrative,
Life of an American Slave and he goes
on to describe the effects of the religious movement, “If the revival had any
effect on his character, it made him more cruel and hateful in all his ways, but
after his conversion he found religious sanction and support for his
slaveholding cruelty” (9.2). These revival meetings not only were a place to
practice emotional salvation, but also a place for Southern slaveholders to come
together and unite against abolition.
Pro-slavery leaders also used the Bible as an argument to
describe slavery as something that was natural and existed since the beginning
of time. Also, in reference to the New Testament, Jesus never referenced against
the Bible, and pro-slavery leaders suggested that because Jesus was never
against the idea of slavery. They believed that slavery was something that God
had created for the betterment of society, and believed that there would always
be a lower caste system to take upon themselves to labor for the upper classes.
According to The History in Defense of Slavery, this created a balance and
equipped America to live in harmony with one another just as the Bible suggests
His people should do.
Anti-abolitionists’ main goal of fighting for slavery was
the benefit of the masses. They wanted America to continue to remain successful
in global trade, but also that cotton created money for slaveholders to take
care of many the slaves that they house within their plantations. Cotton was not
only “King” in the South, but that cotton benefited the North as well.
Pro-slavery leaders not only presented their argument as a global and economic
advantage, but that it was social benefit as well. It presumably allowed for
Southerners to take care of their families and neighbors, but to serve God in
the process by taking care of the poor.
Pro-slavery Writers
William Gilmore Simms.
(1806-1870). Simms was known for being outspoken with
his beliefs in support of slavery. He was known as not only an influential
scholar in the South, but also a notable Southern novelist and author. He was
inspired by the Southern landscape, but also the social and political atmosphere
that encompassed South Carolina. Still to this day, he is celebrated as one of
the most influential men reigning from South Carolina. He went on to write many
reviews and novels, but at the time couldn’t be taken seriously by other
scholars and writers based on the fact that he lacked an aristocratic
background. However, this didn’t stop him from continuing to be outspoken and
pursue being a literary author.
One of his most known works is
The Sword and the Distaff, and this
novel is a response to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel,
Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The main point of
this novel was to prove that slavery shouldn’t be considered as evil and
unnecessary, but that slavery is completely beneficial to the African American
race because of the purity of most Southern slave masters. Many of the sections
within this novel are a direct response to the claims about the brutality of
slavery in Stowe’s novel. Also, claiming that Stowe blew many of the incidents
between slaves and their masters as something that was “overblown” or never
happened. Simms was continuing to gain popularity and even Edgar Allen Poe began
to take notice by claiming that Simms was “one of the most prominent novelist
that America has ever produced” (Broadway Journal).
In the 1840s, Simms began to take an even bigger interest
in politics, and served as a representative for the South Carolina Legislature.
He became consumed with the Civil War, and inevitably leaned on his writings as
a form of therapy as the South failed to meet his expectations (Simms
Initiatives). With the failure of the Confederacy, his reputation began to tank,
but he continued to write and lean on poetry to cope up until his death.
His contribution to pro-slavery was being an influential
author and speaker for anti-abolitionists. No one can argue that he wasn’t a
brilliant author, but one can infer that through his writings he was able to
create a discussion amongst the South. He noted that the fight to keep slavery
was of extreme importance to the South and that many of the arguments made in
Uncle Tom’s Cabin were untrue. His
response to Stowe’s novel is one of the most popular works in the pro-slavery
genre.
Mary Boykin Chesnut.
(1823-1886). One of the many things that intrigued me
about Mary Boykin Chesnut was that she grew up in an aristocratic Southern
family and ended up marrying a well respected lawyer turned politician, but
detested the idea of slavery. However, unlike many young girls in the South, she
payed attention to the social construct of classes, and even so documenting them
in her diary which was later published.
Mary’s father, Stephen Decatur Miller,
was a governor of South Carolina and also served as a U.S. representative. She
became accustomed to upper-class social gatherings and payed attention to the
way white men treated one another, but also their treatment of their family and
their slaves. This became a huge part of her early writings even as she was
attending Talvande’s French School for Young Ladies. She had an extremely strong
educational background with a focus on French and German.
She later went on to marry James Chesnut
Jr., and like her father he was a very well known lawyer turned politician. Mary
took a very active role in her husband’s career and took an extreme interest in
entertaining many of the couple’s friends and colleagues. These interactions
gave her plenty of material to write about in her journal, and one of the main
things she documented was the secrets within the upper class in South Carolina.
At the point, she became intrigued by gender roles in the South. She noticed the
extreme advantage that white men had in the South while women were just
bystanders. She also began to wonder about the many mixed race children that
seemed to inhabit the many Southern plantations. She was able to mingle with
many of South Carolina’s elite and began to write about these issues that
encompassed the white men’s plantations.
When it came to gender roles and
expectations Chesnut soon realized the brutality that slave women were subjected
to. Many slaves on Southern plantations kept increasing, but many of these
babies were mixed races. I imagine being a wife of a confederate leader she was
exposed to many different Southern families, and therefore able to see the abuse
of slaves within the South. Unfortunately, at this time in history, women
weren’t given the right to vote, but also there voice wasn’t necessarily heard.
The only thing Mary could do was write in her journal about the suffering and
brutality that she witnessed within these plantations.
In her novel,
A Diary from Dixie, Mary documents
that bondage that encompasses a Southern man’s wife, “There is no slave, after
all, like a wife…Poor women, poor slaves. All married, all children and girls
who live in their father’s houses are slaves” (Chesnut). Her diary wasn’t able
to be published until after her and her husband’s death because of her fear as
to what would happen to her, but it depicts the struggle of being a Southern
man’s wife when you do not believe in the cause that they were fighting for.
Towards the end of her diary, the entries became extremely scarce, “I do not
write often now—not for want of something to say, but from a loathing of all I
see and hear. Why dwell upon it” (Chesnut). The fight to keep slavery at this
point was becoming a losing battle at this point and men Southern leaders were
beginning to realize that the North would be victorious.
Mary didn’t necessarily have much of a
contribution to pro-slavery, but she was able to write about her experiences and
allow access of her diary to the public domain. She was very persistent about
getting her diary entries published because she wanted people to understand what
was happening during the 1800s in the South. She was able to express the
distress that she felt as not only a woman but also a wife to a confederate who
didn’t believe in the same fight for slavery. To me, her contribution showed
that women had an important role during the Civil War. She wasn’t weak and
naïve, but she was intelligent enough to look at the state of the world and
acknowledge what needed to be changed.
Article Review
As suggested through our course
site, I looked into a site titled Uncle
Tom’s Cabin & American Culture: A Multi-Media Archive, and my goal was to
find more textual evidence of pro-slavery writings, and I secretly was hoping
for a pro-slavery response from the North. I hit the trifecta! An Anti-Tom
response from the N.Y. Courier & Enquierer and the main idea of this response
was to show that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel wasn’t based on facts, but rather
an untrue account. One of the main points of this article was that their was
never any separation of slave families, but not only was the claim rebutted but
the article states, “Every person is expressly prohibited from selling
separately from their mothers, the children who shall not have attained the full
age of ten years” (Uncle Tom’s Cabin & American Culture). This portion of the
site was intriguing to me because I had never read a text that defended slavery
in the South. However, the writer in this response didn’t seem to be as much
defending the idea of slavery, but intensely focused on proving Stowe to be a
liar. Offering her no forgiveness and stating that her novel is basically
unforgivable because of the light that she shed on America. A light that is
based on lies.
As I did my research on pro-slavery and
the arguments for slavery, I noticed that the treatment of slaves was often
compared to the treatment of poor individuals in Europe. When pro-slavery
leaders compared the two, they often inferred that slaves were treated better in
America. I couldn’t gather enough information at the time about this, but
through this website there was a text that explained in detail this idea that it
was better to be a slave in America than to be poor in Europe.
The Daily Dispatch described in an
untitled article that the treatment of poor individuals is seen as an human
because of the view that these people are seen as “valueless”. This article goes
on to explain that slaves are given advantages that the lowest class in Europe
were never given. They had the opportunity to work and to be taken care of by a
plantation family, but should be “thankful regardless of their master’s
treatment” (Uncle Tom’s Cabin & American Culture). This article was quick to
remind readers that this comparison only was brought up by Harriet Beecher
Stowe, and if any colored men and women were outraged, they had Ms. Stowe to
thank.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin has produced an
incredible amount of responses. Until taking the American Renaissance class, I
had known the support and outrage that this novel has caused many groups in
America. Not only did this website provide many texts that are responses to this
novel but it also provided media responses, illustrations of slave life in the
South, and even pro-slavery text in the twentieth century. In my ignorance, I
never imagined that a website like this would exist. Many of these resources are
intensely trying to prove to reader’s that slavery was moral. I would highly
recommend this website to anyone who is seeking more knowledge on slavery in
general. It is a great place to be exposed to the diverse content of arguments
that encompassed slavery.
What
I Learned
In all honesty, my research approach was
all over the place. This journal assignment was a huge undertaking for me
because of my topic. My topic is extremely controversial and I thought I knew
what I would get out of it. I still understand slavery to be something that
causes intense sorrow and emotion within me because of the brutal mistreatment
of individuals based on their skin color, but learning about pro-slavery
arguments has shown me that slavery still very much is a factor in our world
today.
Most of my sources were used to just get
a general idea of what pro-slavery looked like and was. I understood what
slavery was, but I didn’t understand or even know the ideas that pro-slavery was
built on. As I began to realize that the basis of pro-slavery was about cotton
and keeping cotton as the most viable resource in America it showed me that not
a lot has changed about America. Maybe not to this extent, but we still will do
anything for and to anyone for a profit. We are still a country that values
money over people. Maybe I should have researched a happier topic because it
would have inspired hope within me but in some gothic way I’m pleased to of
learned more about the history of slavery in America. This information and the
readings will allow me to not only be educated about slavery, but to understand
the argument for it and against it.
In the beginning of my paper, I wrote
about this idea that many public schools are teaching or omitting certain
aspects of slavery in America. My thoughts on exposing my future students to as
many aspects of America’s history is still the same, but my thoughts on how I
would want to expose my student’s to this history has drastically changed. While
I included a short snippet of Frederick Douglass’ writings about life on the
plantation, I really found myself reading this text all over again. When you
read a personal account of living through slavery in the South it makes it more
real to the reader. As I am preparing to become a teacher I have been taking
notes of all of the writings that have interested me historically and maybe one
day I will be able to implement them into my lesson plans.
I found myself captivated by Mary Boykin
Chesnut. If I had more time to research about her writings I would be in heaven!
So many times people become influenced in their beliefs by their parents,
spouses, or friends, but Mary was intelligent enough to notice that what was
happening around her was not moral. She was able to use her social status to get
to know what was going on in many of the Southern plantations and write about it
in her diary. Analyzing her diary, as a whole, would have allowed me to really
get a sense of who she was in her inner circle, but also how she handled have
such differing beliefs than those around her. I got to thinking that she would
have been of value within the Women’s Suffrage movement. I am almost positive
that she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton would have been the best of friends. She
wasn’t afraid to express her beliefs, and knew that her writings needed to be
published to spread awareness of what was going on in the South during the Civil
War.
All in all, I think I learned a lot more
than I thought that I would have. I was exposed to a vast of information about
pro-slavery. The use of the Bible as an pro-slavery argument was something that
was shocking to me. I’m vastly aware that they Bible gets taken out of context
quite regularly, but to use part of the Bible to prove that slavery was created
for the glory of God was something I wasn’t prepared for. I guess they missed
the part about God freeing his people from the shackles of slavery in Egypt, but
then again I may be wrong. I highly recommend this assignment for future classes
based on the amount of information you will learn, and the opportunity to use
this knowledge to help you in your future career.
Works Cited
Decredico, Mary A.
Mary Boykin Chesnut: A Confederate Woman’s Life. Madison. House. 1996.
Guilds, John. The
Simms Reader: Selected Readings. Southern Text Society. 2001
White, Craig. “The Great Awakening”. Coursesite. Web.
Accessed 26 Nov. 2018.
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/why-was-cotton-king/
http://www.ushistory.org/us/27f.asp
http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/proslav/prhp.html
"Great Star" flag of pre-Civil War USA