Differences Between The Antebellum Period And The Civil War

Devin Plascencia
HST 2201

Enslavement may have functioned as the single-greatest contributing factor to the economic prosperity of the United States. Even so, enslaved Americans’ experiences were far from singular. Not only did enslaved experiences differ based on the demands of each cash crop – namely tobacco, rice, sugar, and cotton – but also based on the size of slaveholding residencies, urban or rural conditions, and the temperaments of individual enslavers. Historical eras also informed differing slave experiences. Making use of evidence from historians Peter Kolchin and Chandra Manning, I argue that the experiences of enslaved Americans differed between the antebellum period and the Civil War.
I assert that one way enslaved African

Slaves during the civil war saw their ability to act independently and autonomously rise dramatically due to the chaotic time period they found themselves in, while antebellum slaves often had far more restrictive, intrusive, and detailed systems in place to restrict their agency. In the antebellum, slave “autonomy was sharply circumsized” as close contact and operation between masters and slaves meant that “whites were impinged to an unusual degree on slave life”, and used this proximity to restrict the agency of their slaves (Kolchin, pg.118). Masters would often set up a long list of rules which “told them when to rise in the morning, when to go to the fields, when to break for meals, how long and how much to work”, along with a large catalog of other tasks, actions, and privileges which were enforced in brutal fashions (Kolchin pg. 118). In a stark shift from this time period, the civil war allowed slaves to act more autonomously and enact agency they previously had been limited in as both man and woman “took advantage of opportunities the war uncovered to gain freedom” (Manning, pg 109). Other examples of slaves enacting agency include when they would be caught “dressing themselves in their masters’ ‘best apparels’ and ‘valuables’”, an action unthinkable during the antebellum due to the close eye of the owners (Manning, pg. 109). Therefore,

During the antebellum era, many enslaved Americans would undergo significant trauma and hardship as their family structures were subject to rapid and harsh separation due to slavery, however, the civil war differed from this as although this practice maintained its horrible grasp, slaves had the ability to potentially escape this once iron-gripped fate. It is undeniable that slavery caused the separation of many families, as “There were numerous occasions, by no means all involving sale, in which slaves were forcibly removed, either temporarily or permanently, from their loved ones” (Kolchin, pg. 125). Systems of selling or transporting slaves across plantation and state lines were commonplace, with “wrenching - and permanent - disruption of families” being a primary symptom of this common practice (Kolchin, pg. 125). Throughout this period, “about one first marriage in three was broken by forced separation and close to half of all children were separated from at least one parent.”, and though the Civil War did not eradicate this stain upon society, it did provide alleviation in some forms (Kolchin, pg. 126). As Union soldiers marched further south, “With their own eyes, soldiers saw slavery snap bonds between parents and children”, and many took deep within themselves a hatred of what tragedies they saw (Manning, pg. 49). This shifted the slave experience as it made maintaining the