PW - Key Concepts Lesson
Key Concepts
Before you begin...
Notes are given here as well as in the Readings Document from Boundless that is available to download below. There are 4 presentations over the next few pages to view as well (which questions may also be drawn from). This key concepts lesson is very important as it covers the main areas of the Advanced Placement frameworks and the Georgia Performance Standards. Many of the test questions will relate to items found here.
Download the key concepts questions that are found below and answer these as you read and view the information. The answers are found in the text on this and the following pages, the Readings Document, and in the 2 presentations. After you have done this you will use these answers to take the assignment check quiz for this module. Again, it is very important that you answer the questions carefully before taking the assignment check.
Abolition
By 1820, although racial discrimination against African Americans remained, slavery had largely ended in the North. Many northerners and some southerners took up the cause of abolition, a campaign to abolish slavery immediately and to grant no financial compensation to slave-owners. As most slaves were held in southern states, abolition was a significant issue that led to growing hostility between northerners and southerners. Prominent abolitionists included African Americans, whites, men, and women. Among the most notable were:
- William Lloyd Garrison, a writer and editor, was an important white abolitionist. He founded regional and national abolitionist societies and published an antislavery newspaper that printed graphic stories of the bad treatment received by slaves.
- Frederick Douglass, a former slave, worked for Garrison and traveled widely, giving eloquent speeches on behalf of equality for African Americans, women, Native Americans, and immigrants. He later published autobiographies and his own antislavery newspaper.
- The Grimke sisters, Sarah and Angelina, were southern women who lectured publicly throughout the northern states about the evils of slavery they had seen growing up on a plantation. Their public careers began when Garrison published a letter from Angelina in his newspaper.
View the presentation on Abolitionism below.
Slavery as a Major Political Issue
Most white southerners opposed abolition. White writers and public speakers argued slavery was a necessary part of life in the South. The southern economy, they said, was based on large-scale agriculture that would be impossible to maintain without slave labor. They also boasted that southern white culture was highly sophisticated and said it was made possible by the plantation economy. Another proslavery argument claimed slaves were treated well and lived better lives than factory workers in the North. In fact, some whites said they provided better lives for slaves than free blacks were able to provide themselves. When settlers in the slaveholding Missouri Territory sought statehood, proslavery and antislavery politicians made slavery a central issue in national politics.
View the presentation about the Antebellum South below.
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