A People’s History of the United States: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

For nearly a century, the United States government supported slavery for one reason: it was exceedingly practical. The U.S. depended on industry, and slaves provided free labor, which allowed the Southern states to produce massive amounts of cotton and other crops without going into debt.

It’s probably impossible for anyone living in America today to grasp slavery fully. Slave owners were cruel with their property. Simply by buying slaves, they tore apart black families; then, slave owners forced their slaves to work exhausting jobs from sunrise to sunset. Many slave owners recognized that they needed to devise “ingenious punishments” to frighten their slaves into submission. Additionally, some estimates suggest that, on average, half of all slaves were whipped every year. However, some slaves found ways to fight back; in 1831, Nat Turner gathered about seventy slaves and killed at least fifty-five white men, women, and children. As a result, slave owners lived in constant fear of slave rebellions, and they tried to prevent rebellions by punishing the slaves more harshly. Other slaves found ways to run away from their plantations. Still other slaves rebelled simply by not working very hard. At many plantations, poor whites (many of them Irish immigrants) worked alongside black slaves. Slave owners, recognizing the danger of an uprising, enforced laws to separate whites from blacks. Slave owners also used religion to control slaves, citing Biblical passages to justify slavery and enlisting some slaves to preach to other slaves.

It’s often argued that slavery destroyed the black family. In fact, black slaves adapted to their changing situation by developing new family relationships. Some historians of slavery have argued that slaves practiced a complex kinship system, whereby all adults looked after all children, and older children looked after younger children. With the help of this “family,” many slaves found ways to hang on to their dignity as human beings. Slaves turned to storytelling, music, song, and humor for comfort and resistance.

In 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, whereby northern states were required to return fugitive slaves who had made their way north to their masters down south. Zinn interprets the Fugitive Slave Act as confirmation that “the shame of slavery was not just the South’s”: the entire country was complicit.

In the North, free blacks thought about slavery constantly. The most famous black man in America, Frederick Douglass, spoke out tirelessly against slavery, partnering with white abolitionists. Although most history books focus on the activism of white abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, free black abolitionists were the true “backbone of the antislavery movement.” White abolitionists could be enormously condescending to African Americans, even as they fought on the same side. When Sojourner Truth, one of the most eloquent abolitionists, spoke to a crowd in New York City, she was mocked for being a black woman.

In the years leading up to the Civil War, John Brown led a raid on a military arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in an effort to arm slaves. His plan failed, and he was arrested. However, it has been argued that Brown’s “failure” brought attention to the abolitionist issue and convinced the country that, as Brown said, “the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.” Brown was executed with the full approval of the federal government—the same federal government that enforced the Fugitive Slave Act, tolerated slavery, and ruled that black slaves were property, not people.

In the end, the federal government ended slavery “under conditions controlled by whites, and only when required by the political and economic needs of the business elite of the North.” Abraham Lincoln, the president during the Civil War, skillfully combined lofty anti-slavery rhetoric with economic practicality. He refused to denounce the Fugitive Slave Law publicly, and insisted on many occasions that Congress did not have the right to ban slavery. When Lincoln was elected president in 1860, the Southern states seceded in part because they predicted that Lincoln would enact a high tariff on manufacturers and strengthen the National Bank, policies that contradicted slave owners’ interests.

Lincoln gradually changed his views on slavery throughout the Civil War. Some historians have characterized him as a “barometer,” adjusting to the national opinion. When he issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, it was worded so as to leave “slavery untouched in states that came over to the North.” In spite of its wording, the Emancipation Proclamation spurred the antislavery movement; the Union army accepted black soldiers, and abolitionists became bolder in their demands. In the South, slaves deserted and fought in the Union army. It’s been estimated that one in five slaves ran away at some point during the Civil War. However, even though African Americans joined the Union army in the hopes of fighting for equality, they weren’t treated equally: they were given the toughest jobs.

After the Civil War, slaves were freed from bondage, but they weren’t compensated with land or money. Indeed, Lincoln signed laws that ensured that the land of former slave owners passed down to their next of kin, not to the former slaves who’d worked on the land for years. The American government didn’t fight to end slavery; it fought to “retain its enormous national territory and market and resources.”

Following the Civil War (during the period known as Reconstruction), the Republican Party enacted a series of laws that strengthened African American rights, giving them the ability to vote, own property, and avoid discrimination. The government also deployed troops to the South to enforce these laws. Furthermore, the government enacted laws allowing blacks to be elected to state legislatures, although they were a minority in almost every state. To this day, many history textbooks claim that, in the Reconstruction era, blacks “dominated” Southern government, and behaved ineptly. This is a myth—while it’s true that some black politicians were corrupt (as many politicians are), the new black leadership helped enroll tens of thousands of black children in public school for the first time ever, among many other achievements.

In spite of some milestones in the black community in the years following the end of the Civil War, life remained bleak for most African Americans. Former slave owners organized terrorist attacks on black schools and churches. Whites rioted throughout the South, killing and intimidating blacks. The most notorious terrorist organization of the era was the Ku Klux Klan, which organized raids, lynchings, beatings, and burnings. By the 1870s, the violence in the Southern states was the worst it had been since the Civil War, but the federal government was reluctant to send more troops to enforce order. Around the same time, the Supreme Court nullified many of the legal protections for African Americans.

In 1877, with the inauguration of Rutherford Hayes, the last Union soldiers left the South, signaling the end of Reconstruction and leaving free blacks with little federal support: legal, military, or even symbolic. Hayes had been elected due to a behind-the-scenes deal between his political managers and those of his opponent, Samuel Tilden. In exchange for putting Hayes in the White House, Northern politicians not only pulled troops out of the South, but they also assured Southern coal and iron businessmen that they’d be included in the Union’s plans for industrial expansion. In short, the election of Rutherford Hayes ended Reconstruction and signaled that Northern elites were willing to cooperate with the wealthiest Southerners regardless of their political positions.

The 1880s and 90s were arguably the “low-point” for black people in the entirety of American history. Without government protection, blacks lived in fear, either of being attacked by white aggressors or of being arrested for trivial crimes. As one black journalist wrote in the 1890s, “The white man who shoots a negro always goes free, while the negro who steals a hog is sent to the chain gang for ten years.” Some black Southern leaders, such as Booker T. Washington, emphasized organization and economic independence in the black community. Others encouraged blacks to leave the South altogether.

Looking back on the 1870s, the writer W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that the “betrayal of the Negro” was indicative of something even more horrible: “a new capitalism and a new enslavement of power.” After the 1870s, he argued, American capitalists became more powerful and far more daring in exploiting working-class people. In a sense, Du Bois argued, the 1870s marked the beginning of an era in which, for all purposes, poor black and white people became slaves to capitalists and capitalism.