Zinn Chapter 9

1. I feel that Zinn’s thesis in chapter 9 is that life was not much better for the slaves in the south even after the Civil War. Similarly many people think that blacks in the north had life much better than the slaves in south, but for the most part this wasn’t true. Life didn’t get much better for the blacks after the Civil War and maybe for some it got worse.
2. Zinn begins chapter nine by listing a stunning fact that between 1790 and 1860 the slave population in the United States increased by three and a half million and with that cotton production ballooned from thousands to millions. This occurred even though slave importation became illegal in 1808 and he estimated that 250,000 slaves were imported after that date. He states that slave families were torn apart just so the plantation owners could make some extra cash that they didn’t need. Even with these terrible tactics slave rebellion was rare, but the slave owners were still always worried about it. One slave that rebelled and escaped to the north was Harriet Tubman. Zinn listed two interesting quotes from her. First she would tell slaves that she was assisting to escape, “You’ll be free or die.” Amazingly she was not afraid of death as she said, “There was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive.” He also tells us that some poor whites would help with slaves escaping just because they hated the rich plantation owners. But slave-owners didn’t like this so they paid poor whites to be overseers. But through slavery, the blacks formed a community with one another as Zinn states on page 133, “The slave community acted like a generalized kinship system in which all adults looked after all children and there was little division between ‘my children for whom I’m responsible’ and ‘your children for whom you’re responsible’… It was part and parcel, as we shall see, of the social process out of which came black pride, black identity, black culture, the black community, and black rebellion in America.” England was not in favor of slavery in the U.S. and the U.S. thought about war. But the slaves would not have fought as was quoted from page 137, “If war be declared… Will we fight in defense of a government which denies us the most precious right of citizenship?” Some white abolitionists in the north did help out the anti-slavery movement, but blacks still had to deal with racism in the north. Therefore the free blacks took it upon themselves to lead the anti-slavery movement. John Brown tried to start a rebellion, but it was squashed before it began. Still even with the anti-slavery movement in the north, clearly there was still racism as the Supreme Court ruled in 1857 on page 139 that slave Dred Scott could not sue for freedom because “he was not a person, but property.” Many people view Lincoln as a person who didn’t have any prejudices, but even he didn’t see blacks as equal to whites. He said on page 142, “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it.” After the Emancipation Proclamation many former slaves fought for the Union even though they were pretty much still slaves for the army. Without their help the war would have went on for much longer. Even though Lincoln freed the slaves, they didn’t think much of him as he didn’t allow them a chance to succeed in their lives after slavery. After the war several laws were passed that made it a crime to discriminate against blacks, but a few years later none of the laws were enforced. An African American Supreme Court justice was forced to say, “Our constitution is color-blind.” The lack of enforcement made it easy for hate groups to terrorize the blacks. So even after the Civil War, life was not much better for African Americans.
3. I thought the author backed his thesis well throughout the chapter. He used several amazing quotes to validate his argument. Many people think that life for the slave instantly got better after the Civil War, but Zinn does an excellent job of proving that this was not the case in this chapter.
4. In studying Lincoln in history classes throughout my previous education, I always thought that he viewed African Americans as equals. By some of his quotes in this chapter, you can see that this was not the case. How sad it is that we only hear about the good things that our early presidents did. It is clear to me that at a young age our nation wants us to view these men as some of the greatest men in our country’s history so they skew much of their backgrounds so we only see the positive side of them.