Basic US History: #1 Slavery Trivia Quiz

Answer: four million people

According to the 1860 U.S. Census, there were 3,950,528 slaves held in the states at that time. Certainly, accuracy, methodology and exact numbers are questionable, but the general scope of the "peculiar institution" and the untenable problems it created are not. Georgia had the most, with 462,198 and Mississippi had the greatest percentage, 55% of its population or 436,631 slaves. With these massive numbers of people in captivity, it's easy to see how the fear of slaves escaping and rebelling was a major concern for plantation owners.

Answer: 1619

A Dutch ship off-loaded 20 captured Africans at Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, bringing the barbarous and immoral practice of human chattel slavery to America, initially in the form of indentured servants. The activity grew to epic proportions and eventually tore the nation apart.

The motivation and purpose for this burgeoning human traffic was economic and basic. The new colonists needed cheap labor to cultivate their crops, chiefly tobacco at first, which was in great demand in England. It is noteworthy that for at least a hundred years previously, European explorers, adventurers and early settlers had already brought slaves to areas of the Caribbean and South America.

For example, King Ferdinand of Spain authorized a shipment of fifty slaves to Santo Domingo in 1510, effectively kicking off the systematic import of forced slave labor into the New World.

Answer: cotton

In 1794, Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin (word derived as an abbreviation of "engine," not the alcoholic drink!) This simple machine greatly accelerated the process of separating cotton fiber from seed, increasing by a factor of fifty the amount of cotton that could be processed by a single individual.

This actually increased the need for slave labor because of the profitability factor. As growing cotton became a potentially huge money maker, demand for the raw material skyrocketed and plantation owners scrambled for more land to plant and more bodies to work that land.

The economies of the North and South evolved in different directions, with the North becoming more industrialized and city-based, while the South remained chiefly agrarian, supplying raw materials to the North.

This was a main reason slavery became such an integral part of life in the South.

Answer: Nat Turner's Revolt

Nat Turner was an unusual African American in many ways, and is a figure who will be remembered historically for fomenting and leading the most most threatening and influential rebellion the slave population was able to generate. It sent shock waves of fear throughout the South.

Although he was a slave who lived in Virginia his whole life, he was able to become a minister, highly educated and literate. He preached with fervor and was prone to visions telling him to emancipate his people. The revolt, also known as the Southampton Insurrection, occurred in a rural Virginia county in August of 1831. An eclipse of the sun convinced him it was time to act.

His band of marauding escaped slaves killed more than fifty white colonists before locals, with the help of the state militia, brutally suppressed the rebellion, eventually killing or capturing all the participants. Fifty six slaves were executed for taking part, and many more blacks were punished and murdered in the frenzied aftermath, some undoubtedly not connected to the rebellion. Nat Turner himself eluded capture until October, but was eventually tried, convicted and hanged, admitting no regrets, on November 11, 1831 in Jerusalem, Virginia.

As a result of this event, new more draconian laws were passed to ban any education of slaves, limit their gatherings, and empower those who tracked down runaway slaves.

Answer: Slaves were considered as property, but for political representation each one counted as 3/5 of a person

The slaves were considered as property under law, just like animals or machinery. They had no rights as citizens, thus could not vote anywhere. When it came to representation in the House of Representatives, it was the northerners arguing strict property status for slaves, trying to limit the southern influence in the government.

The southerners, of course, wanted to count each slave just as each free person, thereby giving them more seats in the congress. In the amazingly arbitrary "3/5 compromise" of 1787, it was agreed that for the purposes of representation in congress, each slave would count as three fifths of a person in the census.

This happened at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, and was seen as necessary to win southern support for the new government. Adding to the irony, it was Pennsylvanian James Wilson who proposed this compromise, which in fact codified a huge incentive for the South to increase the numbers of slaves.

This they did, even after the slave trade was outlawed in 1808, by breeding slaves already held, and continuing to import them illegally. Free blacks in the North were sometimes, but not always, able participate in such civic activities as voting.

They faced plenty of discrimination in all areas of the country, and were initially barred from participation in the northern army during the Civil War.

Answer: laws banning interracial marriage

These laws date from the beginning of slavery, before the United States was formed, and were still on the books in many states, especially in the South, well into the 20th century. Although never codified on the federal level, they were particularly insidious because they allowed huge discretion for local law enforcement to intrude into the private, intimate lives of consenting adults.

Many were vague and included prohibitions against cohabitation or any sexual relations between races, as well as nixing formal marriage ceremonies and often criminalizing anyone who enabled such a ceremony. For a powerful dramatic rendering of the scope and effect of these laws on real people, see the fact-based 2016 movie "Loving," the story of Richard and Mildred Loving.

It details the struggles of an interracial couple in Virginia in the late 1950s into the 1960s. They took their fight to be legally married and free from police harassment all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and in 1967 won a decision which invalidated and overturned all state laws banning interracial marriage.

The film was written and directed by Jeff Nichols, and is based on an earlier (2011) documentary by Nancy Buirski.

Answer: Frederick Douglass

Fredrick Douglass was born into bondage in Maryland in 1818, separated from his family early on, and shunted to different plantations. Fortuitously for him, the wife of one of his owners taught him the basics of reading and writing, triggering in him a lifelong search for education and knowledge.

He was to become a powerful and fiery orator, writer, free man and spokesperson for the abolitionist cause. His innate intelligence and fierce determination created in him an unstoppable momentum toward his personal freedom, which morphed into a total commitment to the universality of freedom as a human necessity and a God given right. Fighting slavery in all forms was the only logical result.

After two unsuccessful attempts, he managed to escape his captivity by hopping a train in Baltimore. Using papers obtained from a free black seaman, he made it to Philadelphia by way of Wilmington, and eventually on to New York. Among his key works was his "A Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass: an Autobiography." This book paints an incredibly vivid and articulate picture of the real degradations and horrors of everyday life as a slave. Biographer Roy E. Finkenbine calls Douglass "the most influential African American of the nineteenth century."

Answer: It sold widely, was praised by abolitionists, but was despised and derided in the South.

Considered the most popular American novel of the 19th century, the book was an immediate phenomenon when it appeared. In its first year after publication, it sold 300,00 copies in the states and a million in Great Britain, a huge number for the time.

The social and cultural impact was even more significant. The novel opened the eyes of many formerly ignorant Americans, largely northerners, to the inherent evils and practical horrors of the institution now so deeply entrenched in southern society.

In the South, it sparked widespread outrage and denial, as politicians and citizens alike correctly perceived it as further proof that their way of life was under siege.

Answer: The Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad was neither underground nor an actual railroad, but it was of necessity secret, and its operatives generally tended to be active under the cover of night. It was a loosely organized system which aided captive slaves who had the means and courage to attempt escape. Often spontaneous, many such escape attempts failed, but it is estimated that tens of thousands of slaves did escape first to the North and then on to Canada (where slavery and owning slaves was illegal).

In that country, which Britain controlled at the time, escapees were out of reach of fugitive slave hunters. Participants in this dangerous endeavor used railroad terminology such as "lines" for routes, "stations" for stopping places, and "package" or "freight" for the people being helped. Probably the most famous actor in this drama was Harriet Tubman, who has achieved legendary historical status among African Americans as "the Moses of our people." An escaped slave herself, she was a "conductor" on the railroad and returned to the South many times, literally leading hundreds of slaves to their freedom.

At her height of notoriety in the 1850s, she had a $40,000 dollar bounty on her head, but managed to elude capture from slave hunters and southern authorities.

Answer: Emancipation Proclamation

President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation under powers the Constitution granted him as commander-in-chief of the army, on September 22, 1862, to take effect on January 1, 1863. It was an executive order, not a law passed by congress, and therefore pertained only to slaves held in the southern states which had seceded. It had no effect on slaves held in border states loyal to the Union, such as Kentucky and Delaware. In fact it did not immediately free any slaves, since the North had to win the war to make it reality. Still, it was a watershed moment in US history, as it changed the narrative of the Civil War and the direction of the nation. It made clear that slavery could not stand, and that its abolition was a prerequisite for preserving the Union. It more fully allied Lincoln with the abolitionists, who felt that interpreting the Constitution to permit any form of slavery was wrong. It also gave enormous comfort to all African Americans, slave and free, and immediately strengthened the North's war effort as blacks were now encouraged to enlist in the army and enjoy full protection under the law as soldiers. By war's end, some 200,000 black men had served in the Union army and navy. The thirteenth amendment to the Constitution officially ended slavery when ratified by the required number of states on December 6, 1865.

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction."