Chapter 9 Section 3

Chapter 9 Section 3 la hist

Louisiana’s Antebellum Politics, Commerce, and Culture

Plantation Culture

Slavery was certainly a business, and the business of cash-crop agriculture depended on it as a labor system. However, the people on both sides of that system developed distinctive cultures that grew out of the practice of slavery and the profits it produced.

The wealth generated through the cultivation of sugar and cotton allowed many plantation owners to build large homes. These plantation houses varied in architectural style, but many of them had two stories and columns, either along the front or all around the house to support a veranda (a long open porch, usually with a roof).

Masters home

 The master’s home was sometimes called the big house, and it generally sat in a prominent place near the front of a plantation, often facing the nearest river or road. Planters prided themselves on their hospitality, and they were expected to entertain visitors in grand style. Because plantations were often distant from one another, owners also hosted overnight house parties for fellow planters and their families. Day-long meals and entertainments were followed by evening parties and balls featuring music, dancing, and elaborate ball gowns for the ladies. 

women

The women of a plantation family were expected to raise large families and oversee the domestic activities in the big house and in the service buildings surrounding it. This included the kitchen buildings, which were almost always separated from the main house in this era because of the great risk of fire. The plantation owner and his sons were expected to oversee the business aspects of the plantation. Planters who could afford to do so hired full-time overseers (white men who acted as managers of the slaves and farming operations of plantations) and spent much of their time pursuing their favorite leisure activities

Multiple Choice

What was the name given to the large home built by plantation owners on the plantation?

• Masters Place

• The Mansion

• The Big house

• The shotgun house

Multiple Select

Which were roles/expectations of women in Antebellum Plantation Society?

• Raise a large family

• Take care of the slaves

• Oversee the domestic Activities of the Plantation house

• Oversee the Business bookwork

Multiple Choice

whom had the role of overseeing the business aspects of the plantation?

• The lady of the Manor and her husband

• The Overseer and the wife of the plantation owner

• The slaves

• Plantation owner and his sons

Multiple Choice

Person that was paid to manage the plantation for the plantation owner in cases where they could afford one?

• Top Gun

• The Whip Master

• The plantation owner's master of the Plantation

• Overseer

Slave Culture

Like their masters, enslaved people developed distinctive cultural forms. Except for domestic slaves who lived alongside the family in the main house, most slaves lived in small but nearby houses arranged in an area referred to as the slave quarters. The level at which masters or overseers monitored the slave quarters varied, but in their quarters slaves gathered to cook, talk, sing, dance, mourn, and share their lives with one another

Slave Culture

 Although slaves needed the permission of their master to marry, some chose their own partners. Families developed in the quarters, and generations passed down their knowledge and cultural practices. Some slaves still had memories of ancestors and beliefs dating back to Africa. 

Teaching slaves to read was illegal, so most slave culture was oral, passed along in songs and stories. As the antebellum period proceeded, the slave population became more Americanized and English-speaking, though some slaves continued to speak French along with their masters. Both masters and slaves pursued religious beliefs, but slaves tended to have a distinct interpretation of Biblical texts and religious practices that were separate from their masters.

Multiple Choice

The area on a slave plantation where the slave homes were grouped?

• The Bottom

• The Lazzie Fair

• Slave Quarters

• The Rounds

Multiple Choice

True or False? Slaves required the permission of their owner to marry?

• True

• False

Multiple Choice

True or False Most slave culture was oral.

• True

• False

Multiple Select

In the slave culture it was illegal for someone to do what?

• Free Slaves

• Give slaves money

• Work the slave too hard

• Teach slaves to read and write

Multiple Choice

Slaves and Masters interpreted the Bible the same.

• True

• False

Free People of Color

Although the population of free people of color became significant as early as the Spanish period, the population of this group did not reach its height until 1840, when their numbers reached 25,000. Free people of color occupied a legal and social middle ground between free whites and slaves. They had some of the same rights as white people, but as their numbers grew, the legislature began to pass laws that restricted their rights. 

Free People of Color

In 1830, the legislature passed an act that required free people of color who had come to the state after 1825 either to leave or be imprisoned. In 1859, the legislature even passed a law ordering free people of color to select a master and become a slave for life. Such laws proved difficult to enforce, but they show how this population seemed problematic to some. Some free people of color were also slave owners. The best-documented case is of the Metoyer family who were descended from a slave named Marie Thérèse and a Frenchman named Pierre Claude Thomas Metoyer. 

Multiple Choice

True or False Some free people of color were also slave owners.

• True

• False

Multiple Choice

How did Louisiana deal with the growing number of people of Color in Louisiana in the mid 1800's?

• They ignored them

• They passed laws restricting their freedom

• They passed laws giving them the same rights a whites

• They grandfathered them in but made newly born people of color slaves

Newer Immigrant Groups

Free people of color were not the only population whose presence proved controversial in the final years of the antebellum era. The large numbers of Germans and Irish who came to Louisiana upset social conventions. Most Germans immigrated in family groups. Yet they rankled (annoyed, upset) many Protestants with their distinctive culture of socializing at beer gardens with their families after Sunday worship. The Irish had an even less favorable reputation than the Germans. The Irish tended to arrive poor if not penniless since most were fleeing a devastating potato famine.

Those who made it to the United States were often willing to take the worst jobs imaginable. Slave owners sometimes hired Irish laborers to clear land or do projects they considered too dangerous or risky for their own slaves. Although they were often criticized for being dirty, unkempt (untidy), and hard drinking, by the late nineteenth century the Irish had fully assimilated into the state’s cultural fabric, particularly in and around New Orleans. 

Risks

New immigrants faced more than economic challenges. The conditions of plumbing and drainage were poor in most American cities, and diseases were often spread through contaminated water. Standing water also provided a breeding ground for mosquitoes that could spread yellow fever to humans. In more than half the years of the nineteenth century, yellow fever outbreaks plagued New Orleans, sometimes killing thousands of people in a single summer. The worst antebellum outbreak occurred in 1853. In August alone, more than one thousand people died each week. By the time the epidemic ended, one in twelve New Orleanians had died. Casualties were much higher among recent immigrants, especially the Irish. Twenty percent of the city’s Irish immigrants died that year. 

Multiple Choice

In more than half the years of the nineteenth century, outbreaks ______________ ________plagued New Orleans, sometimes killing thousands of people in a single summer

• Measles

• Yellow Fever

• Small Pox

• Bubonic Plague

Daily Life

Despite disease and the challenges brought about by ethnic tensions, political infighting, and the inequality inherent in a slave society, Louisianians continued to find ways to enjoy and find meaning in life. In rural areas, churches served as community centers where like-minded people met, worshipped, married, and formed new families. Even as politics became more partisan, political party gatherings provided social opportunities. Although speakers sometimes talked for several hours, competing parties sponsored barbeques and served special treats like lemonade and, for the men, hard liquor.

Multiple Choice

What role did Churches serve in communities in Louisiana?

• sites of protest

• Centers of economic despair

• churches served as community centers

• As centers for drinking

The City

On the eve of the Civil War, New Orleans was one of the nation’s largest and wealthiest cities. All kinds of people—slave and free, native and immigrant, visitor and citizen—mixed and mingled on its streets. Those streets were sometimes dangerous, but were also filled with the potential for hearing strange languages and experiencing unique cultural events like the Sunday slave dances in Congo Square. As Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s childhood and subsequent career remind us, despite its inequality, Louisiana’s mixing and mingling of its people created riches that were cultural as well as economic. 

Multiple Choice

What words describe New Orleans before the civil war?

• One of the largest and wealthiest cities in America

• One of the poorest and most disadvantaged cities in America

• One of the most controversial cities in America

• One of the least diverse cities in America