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Helper vs. De Bow: Two Southerners Read the Census

Grade 8 economics: corroborate Hinton Helper and J. D. B. De Bow, who read the same census in opposite ways, and use 1860 data to compare Northern and Southern economies.

Grade 8Social StudiesInteractive · Printable

Aligned toECO.8.2

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Single worksheet
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1 C3 Framework standard
Printable answer key
11 questions
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Details

Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 8
Subject: Social Studies
Question types: Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Circle the answer, Sorting, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students compare how slavery and free labor shaped the economies of the South and the North before the Civil War.
Students corroborate two conflicting accounts and source each writer's purpose.
Students use 1860 census estimates to test claims about who held enslaved people.

How to use

Read the background together, then have partners compare the two accounts line by line before checking them against the census table on their own.

Curriculum

C3 Framework standard covered

ECO.8.2

Compare the economies of the North and the South before the Civil War, including factories, farming, cotton and slavery.

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Name Date

Helper vs. De Bow: Two Southerners Read the Census

Corroborate two clashing accounts of the Southern economy with 1860 census data.

Background: one census, two answers

Read the passage. Then answer the questions.

Who Gained from Slavery?

1By 1860, nearly 4 million enslaved people and about 8 million white people lived in the 15 slave states. Most white Southern families held no enslaved people. Many of them farmed small plots, raising corn and hogs for their own tables and a few bales of cotton or some tobacco to sell. Compared with the North, the South had far fewer factories, railroads and large towns, and much of its wealth was tied up in land and in enslaved people.

2Hinton Rowan Helper was born in 1829 in North Carolina, the son of a farmer. In 1857 he published a book, The Impending Crisis of the South, in New York, after he could not find a Southern publisher. He filled it with tables from the federal census comparing the free states and the slave states. Helper argued that slavery kept the whole South poor and hurt white families who held no enslaved people. He wrote mostly about white Southerners and showed little concern for enslaved people themselves.

3Many Southern leaders called the book dangerous. In parts of the South, people caught with copies were jailed or driven from their towns. In 1859 Republican leaders in the North raised money to print a shorter version, and the uproar helped hold up the choice of a Speaker of the House for about two months.

4James D. B. De Bow edited De Bow's Review, a New Orleans magazine read by planters and merchants, and in the 1850s he ran the federal office that published the census. De Bow urged Southerners to build more railroads and factories, but he also defended slavery. In 1860, as Southern states debated leaving the Union, he wrote a pamphlet arguing that white Southerners who held no enslaved people also gained from slavery and should defend it.

5Neither man spoke for the people whose unpaid work grew the cotton. Frederick Douglass, who escaped from slavery in 1838, later wrote that as a ship caulker in Baltimore he was paid wages but had to hand every dollar to the man who enslaved him. Enslaved people could be sold away from their families, and many slave states made it a crime to teach them to read.

Based on paragraphs 1 to 3, why did many Southern leaders most likely see Helper's book as a threat?

A. It showed that the South had more factories than Southern leaders claimed.
B. It urged poorer white Southerners to turn against slavery.
C. It was written by a Northern factory owner who wanted Southern workers.
D. It asked the North to stop buying Southern cotton at once.

Underline the sentence from paragraph 5 that best shows how slavery took the earnings of an enslaved worker who had a skilled job.

Neither man spoke for the people whose unpaid work grew the cotton.Frederick Douglass, who escaped from slavery in 1838, later wrote that as a ship caulker in Baltimore he was paid wages but had to hand every dollar to the man who enslaved him.Enslaved people could be sold away from their families, and many slave states made it a crime to teach them to read.

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