Slavery became more entrenched in the American South during the late 18th and early 19th centuries as laws defined slaves as property and cotton production expanded, causing the slave population to rapidly increase from 700,000 to 3.5 million. This growing economic and political reliance on slavery isolated the South from the North and caused tensions between states that allowed slavery and those that were moving towards emancipation. However, some like Harriet Tubman fought against slavery by helping slaves escape via the Underground Railroad and inspiring resistance through songs and messages of freedom.

1. The “Peculiar Institution”

2. Background:
• In the South under our new nation Slavery
became more rigid and pervading Laws
increasingly defined blacks as inferior to
whites and attempted to grant owners nearly
unchecked power over slaves.

3. Background:
• While in the North where slavery was not so
deeply rooted they began instituting gradual
emancipation programs.

4. Background:
• James Madison said in 1787: “the real
difference of interests” at the Constitutional
Convention, “lay not between the large and
the small but between the Northern &
Southern States. The institution of slavery &
its consequences formed the line of
discrimination.”

5. Background:
• The invention of the Cotton Gin in 1790’s
allowed Southern planters to expand its
commercial cotton production.
• Thus slavery became even more ingrained and
important to the Plantation life style.
• They began expanding in territory taking
slavery into Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama,
Mississippi, Missouri, and ultimately Texas.

6. Background:
• At the same time the slave population began
to grow in 1790 there were 700,000 by 1850
there were 3,500,000.
• The American South also became increasingly
isolated in maintaining slavery in the early
nineteenth century.

7. Background:
• There were those who fought slavery and tried to
free those held in bondage
• http://www.history.com/topics/slavery/videos#h
arriet-tubman-and-the-underground-railroad
• Harriet Tubman played a large roll in shaping how
slaves began to view themselves she also had a
few slave songs written about her and the
Underground Railroad she helped to strengthen.
They also carried hidden massages or slaves
seeking freedom.