3-4.3

It Is Essential For Students To Know

• South Carolina's agricultural economy became dependent on slave labor as a result of the introduction of the institution of slavery by the English settlers who came from Barbados and was later intensified by the invention of the cotton gin.
• As a result, the southern way of life was well established and defended by the elite class who profited greatly from the use of slaves. Cotton brought prosperity to the state.
• As a result, slavery was accepted by almost all South Carolinians as their way of life, even though many South Carolinians did not own slaves.
• Slavery was defended by the middle class, who hoped one day to be like the elites and by lower class whites who, at the very least, felt superior to the enslaved African American.
• The purpose of the abolitionist movement was to outlaw slavery throughout the United States.
• Abolitionism was seen by South Carolinians as a threat to their way of life.
• Abolitionists spoke out against slavery in speeches and newspapers.
• South Carolina refused to allow abolitionist newspapers to be mailed into the state.
• South Carolinians feared that abolitionists would foster slave revolts and were, therefore, not welcome in the state.
• South Carolinians who spoke out against slavery were often vilified and not accepted by society.
• Some abolitionists, such as the Grimke sisters, were forced to leave South Carolina.
• Abolitionists also provided resting places for escaping slaves along the Underground Railroad. However, this means of escape was not very effective in South Carolina because the state was too far from the border with the North and even farther from Canada.
• Escaped slaves often continued their journey all the way to Canada because they were not safe from recapture in the North.
• The abolitionist movement was effective in South Carolina only in making slave owners more determined to defend the right to own slaves.
• It is important for students to understand that most Northerners were not abolitionists.
• The argument over slavery reached a climax as a result of a series of disagreements between the North and the South over whether or not slavery should be allowed to expand to the western territories.
• South Carolina was afraid that if more states joined the Union as free states, the slaves states would be outnumbered by the more populous free states not only in the House ofRepresentatives, where representation is based on population, but also in the Senate, where each state has 2 senators. They feared that the South and South Carolina would lose control over the right to have slaves as a result of national legislation.
• States' rights was an idea that was supported by South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun [in the Nullification Crisis of 1832]. It was the idea that the state had the right to decide whether or not to obey national laws. This theory did not conform to the intent of the Constitution of the United States. The theory of states rights’ supported the notion that only the South Carolina legislature had the right to make decisions about slavery (or any other issue) in the state and that the state could defy national laws with which it disagreed thus making them null and void within that state.
• When Abraham Lincoln won the election of 1860, South Carolinians were afraid that he would free their slaves. So they seceded from the Union in order to preserve their way of life.
• However, Lincoln wanted to stop the spread of slavery to the territories but he was not an abolitionist. Lincoln did not advocate ending slavery in South Carolina and the rest of the South. South Carolina and other southern states were attempting to hold on to a way of life that was based on slavery and defended their action with the argument of states' rights.

It Is Not Essential For Students to Know:

• It is not essential for students to know the events that led to the argument over expansion of slavery into the territories including the Missouri Compromise, the Mexican War, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott decision and the raid on Harper’s Ferry by the abolitionist John Brown.
• Students do not need to know that the theory of states’ rights was used first in arguments over domestic and foreign policy in the Washington and Adams administrations that led to the creation of two political parties.
• Students do not need to understand the circumstances and outcome of the Nullification Crisis nor the arguments made by proponents of states' rights.
• Students do not need to know that John C. Calhoun of South Carolina articulated the theory of states’ rights in South Carolina Exposition and Protest.
• Students do not need to know that other Americans believed that only the Supreme Court had the right to declare an act of Congress to be unconstitutional and therefore null and void.
• Students do not need to know the other three candidates in the election of 1860.