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Abolition Movement
A major reform movement that grew out of the Second Great Awakening was the movement for the abolition of slavery in the South. Beginning in the 1830s, journalists like William Lloyd Garrison and formerly-enslaved writers and public speakers Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth attempted to rouse the conscience of the nation to push for immediate emancipation of all enslaved people. Their efforts would lead to the establishment of the American Anti-Slavery Society.
Slave Revolts
While writers and journalists argued about the morality of slavery, enslaved people engaged in a series of revolts against their condition throughout the early 1800s. The largest revolt, the German Coast Uprising, occurred in 1811 along the coast of Louisiana, where hundreds of enslaved people, inspired by the Haitian Revolution, revolted against their condition, burning plantation houses on a two-day, 20-mile march. A group of territorial militia men accompanied by U.S. Army troops and Navy sailors eventually stopped the rebellion and executed the leaders. Twenty years later, in 1831, the bloodiest slave rebellion occurred in Virginia. Nat Turner’s Rebellion terrified Southern society when he and his followers killed 60 whites, including women and children, in their quest for freedom and vengeance. The result was a brutal crackdown on slave life to prevent future rebellions, including a ban on teaching enslaved people to read or write.
Southern Society
With the Southern economy focused on cash crop agriculture, the profitability of growing cotton became its primary engine. By 1850, “King Cotton” was the number one American export, and all of it was grown in Southern states. This had important consequences for Southern society where the focus on exports and agriculture meant that efforts to industrialize faced opposition. Northerners relied heavily on low-cost cotton to keep their textile industry running, and Southern landowners focused on producing as much cotton as possible. Though only a quarter of Southerners owned any slaves, Southern society was dominated by wealthy landowners, the planter elite. That meant the average white Southerner who owned few, if any, slaves continued to support a system of racial supremacy that they felt benefited them.
