AP® United States History review sheet from Aim for Five (aimforfive.com/us-history/units/4/4-12)
Unit 4 · Topic 4.12
4.12 African Americans in the Early Republic
In the early republic, free Black communities in the North built churches, schools and antislavery organizations despite heavy discrimination, while enslaved people in the South resisted in daily acts and in rare but dramatic revolts. Southern states responded to resistance with harsher laws.
Key terms
- free Black communities
- African Methodist Episcopal Church
- Nat Turner's rebellion
- resistance
- American Colonization Society
Free Black communities
As Northern states ended slavery gradually and some Southern owners freed enslaved people, the free Black population grew, from about 60,000 in 1790 to about 320,000 in 1830. Many lived in cities like Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Baltimore.
Free Black Americans faced discrimination nearly everywhere: segregated or excluded schools, few job opportunities, mob violence and, in some states, laws restricting their movement and voting (4.7). Some Midwestern states passed 'Black laws' to discourage Black settlement.
They built their own institutions. In Philadelphia, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones founded the Free African Society (1787), a mutual aid group. After white Methodists segregated Black worshippers, Allen founded Bethel Church, and in 1816 he led the creation of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, the first independent Black denomination in the United States. Black communities also founded schools, fraternal groups and newspapers; Freedom's Journal (1827) was the first Black-owned newspaper.
Black abolitionism
Free Black Americans were central to the abolition movement. David Walker's Appeal (1829) urged enslaved people to resist, by force if necessary, and alarmed Southern officials. Maria Stewart was one of the first American women to speak publicly on political issues. Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth became famous speakers. In 1843 Henry Highland Garnet called on enslaved people to resist their enslavers. Black communities also ran much of the Underground Railroad network that helped people escape.
The American Colonization Society, founded in 1816 mostly by white Americans, proposed sending free Black people to Africa and founded Liberia in 1822 for that purpose. Supporters included some antislavery whites and some slaveholders who saw free Black people as a threat. Most free Black Americans rejected colonization, insisting that the United States was their home.
Resistance by enslaved people
Most resistance was everyday: slowing work, breaking tools, feigning illness, running away for short or long periods, learning to read in secret, and keeping families, religion and culture alive. Enslaved people built their own form of Christianity that stressed deliverance, like the Exodus story of Israel's escape from slavery.
Some planned or carried out revolts:
- Gabriel's planned rebellion (1800, Richmond, Virginia): discovered before it began; Gabriel and about 25 others were executed.
- German Coast Uprising (1811, near New Orleans): the largest revolt by enslaved people in US history, with hundreds of participants; crushed by militia and troops.
- Denmark Vesey's planned uprising (1822, Charleston): betrayed before it started; Vesey and about 34 others were executed, and authorities destroyed Charleston's AME church.
- Nat Turner's Rebellion (1831, Southampton County, Virginia): Turner, an enslaved preacher, led about 70 people who killed about 55 to 60 white people over two days. Turner was captured and executed.
The Southern response
After Nat Turner's Rebellion, Southern states passed harsher slave codes, banned teaching enslaved people to read and write, limited Black preaching and gatherings, and restricted free Black people. Virginia's legislature debated gradual emancipation in 1831–1832 and rejected it. White Southerners increasingly defended slavery as a 'positive good' (4.13) and blamed Northern abolitionists for stirring up revolt.
Worked examples
Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.
- Example 1
Explaining an effect of resistance
Short-answer practice: Briefly explain ONE effect of Nat Turner's Rebellion (1831).
Show the solutionHide the solution
- Step 1: Briefly identify the rebellion.
- Step 2: State a specific effect.
- Step 3: Explain the link.
Answer: Model answer: After Nat Turner led enslaved people in a revolt that killed about 55 to 60 white people in Virginia in 1831, frightened Southern legislatures passed stricter slave codes, including laws banning anyone from teaching enslaved people to read and write. White Southerners feared that literacy and antislavery writings such as David Walker's Appeal would inspire more uprisings.
Common mistakes
- Assuming free Black Northerners were treated as equals. They faced segregation, violence and loss of voting rights in several states.
- Thinking the American Colonization Society was an abolitionist group supported by most African Americans. Most free Black Americans opposed it.
- Treating armed revolt as the main form of resistance. Everyday resistance was far more common.
On the exam
- Expect questions about how African Americans shaped their own lives and fought slavery, not just how they were treated.
- Nat Turner's Rebellion is a common causation example for the hardening of Southern slavery and proslavery ideology.
Connected topics
Videos
Check yourself
5 questions on 4.12 African Americans in the Early Republic. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.
Many free Black leaders in the early 1800s opposed the American Colonization Society mainly because they
The founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, led by Richard Allen in 1816, is best understood as
Source 1: "I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good—a positive good. . . . I hold then, that there never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other."
Source 2: "I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears."
Source 1: John C. Calhoun, senator from South Carolina, speech in the U.S. Senate, February 6, 1837. Source 2: Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself, published by the Anti-Slavery Office in Boston, 1845.
Douglass's argument in Source 2 most directly challenges the claim that
Source 1: "They hinder us from going to hear the word of God—they keep us sunk in ignorance, and will not let us learn to read the word of God, nor write—If they find us with a book of any description in our hand, they will beat us nearly to death—they are so afraid we will learn to read, and enlighten our dark and benighted minds . . . ."
Source 2: "I shall strenuously contend for the immediate enfranchisement of our slave population. In Park-street Church, on the Fourth of July, 1829, in an address on slavery, I unreflectingly assented to the popular but pernicious doctrine of gradual abolition. I seize this opportunity to make a full and unequivocal recantation . . . . I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. . . . I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—AND I WILL BE HEARD."
Source 1: David Walker, free Black clothing dealer in Boston, Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, 1829. Source 2: William Lloyd Garrison, white abolitionist editor, "To the Public," in the first issue of his newspaper The Liberator, Boston, January 1, 1831.
Walker's description in Source 1 most directly supports which claim about slavery in the early 1800s?
Southern states responded to writings like these, and to Nat Turner's rebellion in 1831, most directly by
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