US History

U.S. History Study Guide

The Poor Whites Perhaps a half-million White Southerners lived on the edge of the agrarian economy, in varying degrees of poverty. These "crackers," or "sandhillers," occupied the barren soils of the red hills or sandy bottoms and they lived in squalor worse than the slaves. They formed a true underclass. The Role of Women The position of the Southern woman was similar in many ways to her Northern counterpart but also different. They had fewer opportunities for anything but home life. The middle-class wife was heavily involved in the operation of the farm, and served as supervisor and nurse for the servants as well as manager of the household, while the upper-class women served merely as ornaments. Education was rare and centered on the "domestic arts." High birth and death rates took their toll on childbearing women, and many men outlived several wives. Education Schooling beyond literacy training was available only to the sons of the affluent families. Academies and colleges abounded, but not for the working classes. What public schools there were, were usually inferior and ill-supported. By 1860, one-half of all the illiterates in the United States lived in the South. 11.12 Southern Slave Culture Gag Rule of 1836 Opposed to Abolitionism, Southern congressmen succeeded in pushing the gag rule through Congress in 1836. This rule tabled all abolitionist petitions in Congress and thereby served as a preemptive strike against all anti-slavery discussions. The gag rule was not repealed until 1844, under increased pressure fromNorthern abolitionists and others concerned with the restriction of the right to petition granted by the Constitution. Serving as a Whig representative from Massachusetts, former president John Quincy Adams led the fight against the Gag Rule. Adams argued that the Democrats, were merely thinking of their slave holding voters and were denying Americans basic civil rights since the Constitution guaranteed the right of citizens freely to petition their government. Adams's principled assault on the Gag Rule attracted new converts to the antislavery cause and his skillful evasions made the rule itself ineffective. In 1844, Congress lifted the rule and Adams's victory became one of the celebrated events of the Abolitionist Movement. Southern Response to the Antislavery Movement As the campaign for abolition intensified in the North, the South assumed an ever more defensive position. Biblical texts were used to justify the enslavement of an "inferior race." Scientific arguments were advanced to prove the inherent inferiority of the Blacks. Southern postal authorities refused to deliver any mail that contained information against slavery. Any kind of opposition was brutally suppressed, and the South became a more and more closed society.

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