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| Anti-slavery Image |
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| William Lloyd Garrison's Newspaper |
Throughout the Antebellum Era, most of America's culture surrounded around race, class, and the growing sectional problems across the country. Culture focused around the main issues in politics and those within society, whether it be free blacks in their pursuit of abolition or would it be the Irish who were considered to be inferior to the British (apparently the Irish descendants of the Celtic were barbaric). According to Dr. Robert Knox of the Edinburgh College of Surgeons in his 1850 study published in Philadelphia, "Race is everything, literature, science, art, in a word, civilization, depends on it." His words directly addressed the Antebellum Era, literature and the arts depended on the racial struggles in society, it allowed the entertainment to expand into a mocking of sorts. The Black-face Minstrel show for example, mocked the African American community. White men (often Irish) blacked their faces and entertained audiences with songs, dances, theatrical skits, and anti black political jokes. The show contained cruel stereotypes which included a irresponsible free black man, and a slow-witted slave which entertained white audiences across the border. Race took on another role in society when the support of abolition started to rise within several northern and western communities. But abolitionism did have an affect on culture, several whites began to become involved in the cause by writing anti-slavery newspapers like William Lloyd Garrison, which spread across the country even to the South where he received multiple enemies particularly Southerners who took part in the slave trade and plantations. There were also many types of antislavery images which included a engraving of a chained female slave (made by Patrick Reason who was a black artist), this image spoke directly to white, female abolitionists that were just beginning to join the antislavery movements in the 1830's. Despite the affect racism and abolitionism had on culture, there were multiple pass-times that sprung up throughout the Antebellum Era. One of them coming from Urban Popular culture: Taverns. Taverns which served as the neighborhood centers of drink and sociability, were also frequents centers of brawls and riots. Community groups such as fire engine companies which had once included men of all social classes now attracted the young and the rough who had begun to form gangs, where they defended their turf against others. Some trades such as butchery were notorious for starting fights in taverns. Culture during the Antebellum Era surrounded the ideas of race and abolitionism, newspapers, religions, plays, theaters, even places of social gathering were affected by these ideas to the point where it caused violence and extreme tension between the classes leading up to the Civil War.
