EdCafe Review

                Overall I thought the EdCafe model worked well for discussion.  I enjoyed talking with my peers in a smaller group.  I felt more comfortable to speak up and I believe others did too.  The discussion felt natural, rather than awkward and forced.  I think with the EdCafe model you get more out of presenting than attending.  To present you have to understand your topic.  Sometimes it may require research or searching for primary source images.  To develop really good questions and keep the discussion moving you really need to become an expert on your topic.  With attending however, you may know the topic but do not know the questions.  I felt somewhat unprepared since we did not prepare any notes or highlights as attendees.  The one main thing we should work on improving is the variation of topics.  Most of the group all discussed similar questions which became boring very quickly.

                I personally enjoyed presenting.  I always enjoy leading and presenting.  It felt very easy and was not at all daunting since the groups were so small.  I think I did well talking and keeping the discussion going.  If people did not understand a question, I would repeat it and explain it.  I also would fill in with some guiding thoughts if I sensed a lull or would suggest we move on to a new question.  Also, providing previously researched pictures was a benefit.  Our group’s topic was family (“Bonded to Family”) and I showed everyone a picture of a slave family that really connected to our questions.  Next time I want to improve providing some key notes for attendees.  Most groups were writing the main ideas of what they were saying on their board and I wish I had done the same.  It seemed to really help attendees keep track of the discussion.  Finally, I wish I had paced our discussion better.  We spent a long time on each question and were unable to get to some of the other more interesting questions. 

                As an attendee I tried to participate as often as possible.  I tried to share lots of thoughts and opinions, but I also tried not to monopolize the discussion so others could share as well.  When we discussed why slave owners tried to get runaway slaves back I brought up that besides just money, slave owners wanted to have power over the slaves.  To them slaves were very far below them socially and were a piece of property.  For pride and power they did not want to let them run away; especially in the case of the Harriet Jacobs narrative.  In another discussion I shared that family would be a primary motivation not to commit suicide because of the feeling of responsibility to care for your family.  These were a few of my favorite ideas I shared in the discussions that I think helped to also get others to share similar ideas and thoughts.  As an attendee I also tried to take as many notes as possible.  If the leaders wrote down any ideas or notes I would also write those down.  I also tried to write down the question and then all the ideas discussed below the question.  It was sometimes hard to take notes if you were speaking.  I felt I never really had a chance to actually write down my own thoughts, but I wrote down everything that everyone else said.  Also, I always wrote down our group’s takeaway at the end.  I believe my notes are a fairly accurate representation of what I learned.  The EdCafe model for discussion is an interesting and new way to share thoughts and ideas.

Northerners in Antebellum America Supported Slavery!

Americans in the antebellum north were not opposed to slavery on economic grounds and indirectly relied on slave labor.  They were also not completely opposed to slavery on moral grounds and allowed people in the south to own slaves.  Economically the north relied largely on slavery.  As seen in the graph below, as the number of textile mills in Lowell (a city located in the north) increased, the number of pounds of cotton needed increased.  This caused the number of slaves used to also increase because slaves were needed to grow and pick the cotton.  As the industrial revolution grew in the north and became their fundamental economic structure, more cotton was needed to make fabrics in and clothes in factories, thus requiring the south to need more slaves to meet this demand for cotton.  The north was economically reliable on the south and their use of slaves. 

Some of the wealthiest and most prominent people in the north depended on slave labor and the slave trade occurring in the south.  In a documentary about the DeWolf family, it is revealed that this family lived in Rhode Island, but has been the largest American slave traders in history.  The DeWolf family was rich because of their rum business, but the only way for this business to have been successful was through the use of slaves on sugar plantations. 

                The following short clip from the documentary about the DeWolf family, Traces of the Trade talks about the DeWolf family and their involvement in the slave trade.  

Even though the slave trade became illegal in 1808, the DeWolf’s were not morally opposed to continue trading slaves to fund their business after it was illegal.  Even president Thomas Jefferson looked the other way on their illegal activity.  He was clearly not morally opposed to slavery since he was allowing illegal slave trade activity just because the DeWolf’s supported his presidential campaign.

                In Lowell, people were morally supportive of slavery.  There were anti-abolitionist groups who stated they were “no advocates of immediate abolition”¹.  They believed abolishing slavery denied southerners their constitutional right to property.  Morally not being opposed to slavery, northerners viewed slaves (people) as property.  The anti-abolitionist groups were “opposed to every species of unasked intermeddling or advice to the Slave States, or to individual-slave holders”¹.  Northerners were not morally opposed to slavery enough to interfere with the slave states and slave owners.  They consciously allowed other people to own slaves.   The only thing they were morally against and viewed as violence was “Southern Lynch-Law, Southern mobs, and Southern threats”¹.  They did not view slavery itself as being violence and being morally wrong.  Slavery was not opposed to on moral or economic grounds by Americans in the antebellum north mainly due to the north’s indirect dependence on slaves.

¹Excerpts from Lowell Patriot’s Coverage of Lowell’s Anti-Abolition Meeting, August 28 1825, Courtesy of Pollard Memorial Library Lowell. http://www.edline.net/files/_wdH66_/b4d0623095d7fd993745a49013852ec4/Unit_4_Activity_5_Doc_9_Lowell_Patriot.pdf

Trace’s of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, June 24 2008. http://www.pbs.org/pov/tracesofthetrade/film_description.php