Description
In The Old South, the third e-seminar in the series Slavery and Emancipation, Professor Eric Foner discusses the expansion of slavery during the first half of the nineteenth century, when it became the most powerful economic institution in the United States. He describes the arguments that proslavery Southerners used to defend their "peculiar institution" and details the system of subordination they created whereby slaves had virtually no legal rights. Professor Foner also describes how slaves nevertheless developed a semiautonomous culture that enabled them to survive without surrendering their desire for freedom—to maintain stable families as best they could, develop their own variant of Christianity, and search for ways to resist their enslavement. Using state-of-the art digital techniques, the seminar combines streaming video of Professor Foner's lecture with text, images, maps, audio slideshows, primary documents, and a discussion board.