coastal trade
The domestic slave trade with routes along the Atlantic coast that sent thousands of slaves to sugar plantations in Louisiana and cotton plantations in the Mississippi Valley.
inland system
The slave trade system in the interior of the country that fed slaves to the Cotton South.
chattel principle
A system of bondage in which the slave has the legal status of property and so can be bought and sold.
benevolent masters
Slave owners who considered themselves committed to the welfare of their slaves.
republican aristocracy
The Old South gentry that built impressive mansions, adopted the manners and values of the English landed gentry, and feared federal government interference with their slave property.
"positive good" argument
An argument in the 1830s that the institution of slavery was a "positive good" because it subsidized an elegant lifestyle for the white elite and provided tutelage for genetically inferior Africans.
gang-labor system
A system of work discipline used on southern cotton plantations in the mid-nineteenth century in which white overseers or black drivers supervised gangs of enslaved laborers to achieve greater productivity.
slave society
A society in which the institution of slavery affects all aspects of life.
black Protestantism
A form of Protestantism that was devised by Christian slaves in the Chesapeake and spread to the Cotton South as a result of the domestic slave trade. It emphasized the evangelical message of emotional conversion, ritual baptism, communal spirituality, and the idea that blacks were "children of God" and should be treated accordingly.
task system
A system of labor common in the rice-growing regions of South Carolina in which a slave was assigned a daily task to complete and allowed to do as he wished upon its completion.
Alamo
The 1836 defeat by the Mexican army of the Texan garrison defending the Alamo in San Antonio. Newspapers urged Americans to "Remember the Alamo," and American adventurers, lured by offers of land grants, flocked to Texas to join the rebel forces.
secret ballot
Form of voting that allows the voter to enter a choice in privacy without having to submit a recognizable ballot or to voice the choice out loud to others.
