November 2020
The end of the school year is drawing near. I have much to say about different topics, issues and pedagogy that were encountered from November-April. Once the curriculum moved beyond the Early Republic in late October, the narrative turned to issues that were equally important to understanding the nation’s development and provided context for some of the challenges we face as a nation today. Slavery and its impact on the political, economic and social institutions was the driving force of so many events from 1820-1865. One might expect to see a more explicit reference to the “peculiar institution” in the South Carolina high school US history standards. You don’t. In both the 2011 and 2019 versions, slavery is only referenced in one indicator. Specifically it mentions “the slave states.” As I often joke, the US Constitution and the South Carolina US curriculum share one thing in common; the omission of slavery. And yet, it is inherently connected to almost every major event of antebellum America. Jill Lepore notes that slavery was a clear point of division between Republicans and Federalists in the early 1800s. The invention of the cotton gin, the textile industry and new land revived what the founders believed was a dying economic practice. By 1820, the addition of territory through the Louisiana Purchase and the political pressure to make some decision about race and the future led to the Missouri Compromise. She referenced Baltimore attorney Daniel Raymond who noted in his pamphlet The Missouri Question that slavery “will every year become more inveterate and more formidible.” It was that prediction that led me to The Journal of American History article by historian Lacy Ford titled “Reconfiguring the Old South: ‘Solving’ the Problem of Slavery, 1787-1838.” It’s an interesting read and chronicles how Southern leaders constructed rationales for slavery that were accepted by most whites. By the late 1830s, Ford suggests that any meaningful attempts to overthrow the institution by abolition arguments was met with “a full ideological reconfiguration that pronounced slavery the firmest possible foundation for republican liberty.” My decision to turn this article over to my three honors classes was definitely a gamble. Experience told me that a 28 page article would be a hard sell. And it was. We read and discussed the introduction together as a class. This gave everyone exposure to his overall thesis. Students were then assigned specific pages to investigate one of his supporting claims. These included responses of southern leaders to slave rebellions, economic issues and the abolition movement. Dividing up the reading definitely made things manageable. Once students identified and explained the different ways politicians crafted their positions on slavery from their assigned sections, we looked at the primary sources Ford used to write the article. The Organization of American Historians has an amazing resource called Teaching the Journal of American History. The site pairs articles with a curated set of primary sources used by the historians . This allows your classes to evaluate the sources, discuss their strengths and better debate the quality of the arguments in the article. In other words, you can take a deep dive with these resources and give students some great practice with historical thinking skills. I created a graphic organizer to help students identify arguments in the article and to interrogate the primary sources using questions from the JAH resources. Students were responsible for adding their own information from the assigned readings. We then did a debrief of Ford’s arguments and sources. The graphic organizer needs revisions, but it helped foster a thorough discussion of the article. One bonus to our work was Lacy Ford joined one of my classes to discuss the article. This was at the height of the pandemic, so he joined us via Google Meets. Students submitted their questions in advance and after he talked about some general issues in the article and the review process for the JAH, I read and he answered the submitted questions. He spent about an hour with the class. It was a nice way to wrap up our work with the article. Lapore wrapped up her observations on the slavery debate in this period by looking at the political career of Thomas Morris of Ohio. His antislavery arguments in the late 1830s reflect an awareness of the way slavery had been constructed socially, politically and economically in the United States. She emphasized his denunciation of slavery as “the putrid mass of prejudice, which interest has created, to keep the colored race in bondage.” Lacy Ford certainly gave ample evidence and analysis to support Morris' argument. The degree to which this prejudice has been dismantled over the last 160 years continues to be up for debate.
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AuthorMarc Turner teaches US History and Government in Columbia, South Carolina. Archives
May 2021
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