Enjoy the Break

I hope you all have a wonderful vacation!  Enjoy spending time with your friends and family.  Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

~ Mr. Mullady

Homeroom thank you all for donating those gifts to the Family Service League.  It was very generous of you, and I appreciate it a great deal. Dillon, Elizabeth, Gwen, Cash, Dana and Meredith thank you for wrapping those gifts. 

For the Test

The test tomorrow is open book so it could only help to have your notebook in good order. You are more than welcome to bring something to snack on during the test, I will provide some juice and iced tea. The test will be between 30 and 35 questions. There will be multiple choice, short answer, and a few fill in the blanks.

Some points to look over:

Explain how the cult of domesticity had a positive impact on Southern society.

Who were the yeomen? Why do we know more about the plantation owners then the yeomen?

How was racism used to unite the yeomen, poor whites, and the plantation owners?

What was the economic relationship between the North and South? Between the South and the West?

Overt Resistance and Covert Resistance.

Be able to name at least three Rolling Stones songs.

What was the original cash crop of the South?

What were four major cash crops of the South?

Why were cities larger in the North?

Good luck tomorrow and be sure to eat a healthy breakfast.

Hope you enjoyed the snow

~Mr. Mullady

Quiz Tomorrow!

Here is the checklist for the quiz:

1. The questions for the Florida website Part II.

2. The questions on the Slave System based on pages 439-443 of the textbook.  This handout should be #10 in your notes. 

3. The questions based on today's readings, Digital History, and Slavery and the Making of America.  

4. The role of fables and folk tales in slave culture

5. Examples of Overt and Covert forms of Resistance in the South.

i.e. Overt: uprising, acts of arson, or running away.  Covert: breaking the farm equipment, pretending to be sick, or staging a work slowdown. 

The quiz will be 20 questions long but you only need to answer 17 of them.  If you finish early, I suggest that you work on the Review Sheet for the Unit Test on Monday.

In class earlier this week we talked about how the South experienced a "culture of fear".  The slave owners were afraid that one day their slaves would either run away or stage an uprising and kill them.  The slaves lived with the knowledge that at any given moment their owner could have them severely punished or sold to another plantation where they may never see their family or friends again.  

Good luck tomorrow, eat a good breakfast and bring a snack for the quiz. 

Slavery Website Part II

Hopefully the website will not crash this afternoon/tonight. (keep your fingers crossed)

If the sight is working you need to answer the questions on Health and Work Ethic, Diet, Economic Drawbacks of Slavery, Maronage, Petite Maronage, and Grand Maronage.  That should be on the handout from class.

   Now, if the Florida website is down, and I blame the Floridian Department of Education, then you are to do this second option.

Use the following sites.

Site#1 http://www.afro.com/history/slavery/main.html

Use the "There were No Docile slaves" and "Women Resisted" Links.  Be sure to read all the info on the sides of those pages as well as the main body text.

Site #2 http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=79

A. Use info from both sites to build a chart of examples of "covert" and "overt forms of slave resistance.  Remember that covert means "secret" or "covered up" while overt means "Open" or "Obvious"

B. Use the second site to answer these questions.  Make sure that you are answering them in your own words.

1. Why were there more slave revolts in the Caribbean and Brazil than in the American South?

2. Why were native-born Africans more likely to revolt than born in America?

I am sorry that the website did not cooperate the other day but hopefully it will work out today.

Good luck

Slavery Website

  We have spent some time learning about the various groups that lived in the South prior to the Civil War.  The lives of the planters, yeomen, and the free blacks have all been discussed.  Now we are looking at what were the living conditions life for a slave.

  

High School students from Coral Gables have put together a multimedia website about slavery in the United States.  Tonight for homework you are to read 2 of the following sections from the website: Punishment, Family, Housing, or Health.   After the sections, you are too type 3-6 questions from the readings, as well as the answers to the question.

For example:

1.) Why were Africans chosen to be slaves instead of Native Americans?

A. Native Americans were susceptible to European diseases and Africans were not.

These questions will be part of your quiz on slavery that will be on Friday.  You have the opportunity to write between 30-50% of the questions, so be sure to include your answers.  

The questions do not have to be typed and we will go over them tomorrow in class.

The Yeomen Farmers

"I desire above all things to be a Farmer.  It is the most honest, upright, and sure way of securing all the comforts of life."

~ Georgian man, 1849

The majority of white southerners were yeomen, or small landowning farmers.  The typical farm in the South averages 100 acres in size.    Many of these farmers saw themselves as the noble  independent workers of the land, the type of people Thomas Jefferson had praised and extolled. They were fiercely independent and preached of the virtues of hard work and self-reliance. 

The yeomen and the plantation class competed for the best farmland in the South.  Since the planters had the most money, the yeomen often found themselves working the land that was the least appealing to the plantation class.  Their land was often rocky or less then ideal fro certain crops.  This would forces many yeomen families to explore new territories in an attempt to seek out better and cheaper land.  It would not be uncommon for a yeomen family to uproot several times before finally settling into one location.  Yeomen farmers from the South, immigrants, and settlers from the North would all contribute to the expansion westward of the United States.

Since a slaves were very costly, many yeomen farmers did not own slaves.  If they could afford a slave, a yeomen would own between one and two slaves.  Yeomen did not have the luxury of having free time so slave and master would work side by side in the fields.  This mingling of the races was looked down upon by the plantation class because it showed a form of equality between the races as well as blurring the line between master and servant.  

Racism ensured that the poor whites, the yeomen, and the blacks could not unite and take away the power and the wealthy from the plantation class.  Since the planters led a much more different life then the yeomen and the poor whites, racism would be essential to have those three groups united. 

Yeomen found ways of combining work and entertainment with large community gatherings.  Log rolling contests, barn raising, and corn husking were ways that yeomen would compete against each other.  These games required great amounts of skill and were physically demanding as well.  Yeomen men would also compete to show who was the strongest through log splitting and wrestling.  Abraham Lincoln was known to be one of the best wrestlers in his county. 

Your homework is one of the following:

1.) create an advertisement for a T.V. show that the Yeomen would have enjoyed or create an advertisement for a product that the Yeomen would want

or

2.) write a song/rap/or poem about the Yeomen based on the reading.

     

Antebellum South

    One of the most romanticized periods in American history is the period before the Civil War.  This has become known as the Antebellum Period, meaning Before War.  For decades, authors have been writing stories, novels, poems, and plays all depicting life in the South prior to the Civil War as a land where all white southerners were wealthy plantation owners that were benevolent and kind to their slaves. 

      The truth of the matter is that Southern society was much more complex then how it was depicted in books such as Gone With The Wind.    The plantation owners were just a fraction of the population of the South.  Southern society consisted of Yeomen farmers, poor landless whites, free African Americans, and slaves.  All of these groups were competing for the resources of the land, and at times were manipulated by the wealthy plantation class. 

Prior to the Civil War, life in the North and life in the South began to become very different.  The economy of the North was based on manufacturing and trade.  Cities such as Chicago, Boston, and New York became the centers of industry. In the North factories, mills, and foundries churned out textiles, steel and iron, weapons, and farming equipment. Cities in the North grew rapidly, with more Northerners choosing to work in an urban center instead of being a farmer. Northern states invested heavily in improving transportation networks, with 72% of nation's railroad miles being located in the North.   These, and others would be an advantage to the North later on. 

    In the decades following the patent of Eli Whitney's cotton gin cotton production in the South skyrocketed.  As the production of cotton became more profitable, slaves became a necessity to cotton planters.  In addition to the invention of the cotton gin, there was an increase in the demand for cotton from textile mills in the North.  The Lowell Mills needed cotton from the South to mass produce the textiles that would be sold across the country.  

    Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana were the top producing cotton states in the South, these areas became known as the "cotton belt".  King Cotton did rule the Southern economy, but other crops were being produced as well.  In Virginia, tobacco became the most prominent crop. Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana were the top producing cotton states in the South. The tobacco plant did not exhaust the soil as much as cotton, and was more suited to grow in the Virginian climate.  Along the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia, rice production became a highly profitable business to be involved with.  

   

   As industry and manufacturing grew in the North, agriculture became essential to the Southern economy.  The workers in the factories and the mills of the North helped create a different culture then the farmers and planters of the South.  Culturally, the nation had become divided.  

For Homework tonight:

Finish the Getting a Sense of the South handout.