ance, but the most frightening to Southern whites was the revolt of Nat Turner where men, women, and children where killed on a killing spree. The South becomes more and more a closed society because whites become increasingly paranoid over the fear of slave revolts. Whites try to rationalize the Institution of Slavery in many ways. There was the idea of Scientific Slavery, which said that slaves where closer to apes by measuring the shape of their heads to prove that they weren’t very knowledgeable. Southerners also said that being one of their slaves was better than being a wage slave to Northern Factories because Southern slave owners would take care of their slaves into old age and sickness. Another rationalization was that all slaves where to be treated as children because they could not govern themselves properly. These same white southerners reacted very quickly to threats made against slavery such as seizing and destroying mail-promoting abolitionism. Southern mobs would beat up, and tar and feather any suspicious Northerners. The Gag Rule also came into play, which meant that between 1834 and 1836 no petitions dealing with slavery would be turned away by (?). Stronger fugitive slave laws where also passed....
