James Henry Hammond
Claimed slavery was the cornerstone of Republican edifice and it ensured political stability.
Portrayed slavery as a happy institution and contrasted it with wage slaves, people who got paid for working that appeared downtrodden and defeated.
SIGNIFICANCE: architect of pro-slavery ideology
Manifest Destiny
John O'Sullivan responsible for the term
Belief that the US had a divinely inspired mission to expand
Expansion was not only good, it was God's will
most radical advocates were the filibusters
Connects to the idea of continentalism (the continent is ours)
puts expansion in the name of moral righteousness
SIGNIFICANCE: an agenda to spread anglo-saxonism and white supremacy
Anthony Burns
Fugitive slave who escaped to Boston
His master found him. He was arrested and sent back.
Abolitionists used his case to provoke a standoff with fed troops.
SIGNIFICANCE: spectacles like these helped create outrage among northerners about the fugitive slave law.
Ethnology
Classification of human body types
Believed physical characteristics gave insight to intelligence, morality, leadership ability
SIGNIFICANCE: used to ascribe different values for justifying the superiority of whites
All Mexico
Movement to bring all of Mexico into the union after the Mexican American war
Best way to ensure future peace, apparently.
Contradiction to MD, you're making it less white by bringing in all the browns.
Moral Suasion
Anti-slavery argument based on the idea that slavery is evil because it's immoral.
If people changed their brains the law would follow.
William Lloyd Garrison was a big proponent of this shit.
SIGNIFICANCE: extension of perfectionism, we can become good even if we aren't. We are not inherently evil.
Popular sovereignty
Stephen A. Douglas proposed this in the decades before he civil war.
Americans should be able to vote whether slavery was...