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Chapter 13: The Old South 1820 to 1860

U.S. A NARRATIVE HISTORY, EIGHTH EDITION

DAVIDSON • DELAY • HEYRMAN • LYTLE • STOFF

The South “was united by ties so strong, they eventually outpulled those of the nation itself. At the heart of this unity was an agricultural system that took advantage of the region’s warm climate and long growing season. Most important, this rural agricultural economy was based on the institution of slavery, which had far-reaching effects on all aspects of southern society.”

The Old South1820 to 1860

What’s to Come The Social Structure of the Cotton Kingdom

Class Structure of the White South

The Peculiar Institution

Slave Culture

Southern Society and the Defense of Slavery

The Social Structure of the Cotton Kingdom (1) The Cotton Environment

• Dramatic transformation of the landscape

The Boom Country Economy

• Cotton pushed westward • Agriculture in the Upper South adjusted

• Wheat and corn became major crops • Surplus slaves were sold to planters in the Deep South

• Rate of expansion was unsustainable • Single-crop agriculture rapidly wore out the soil • Incidence of disease increased

The Social Structure of the Cotton Kingdom (2) The Rural South

• Most labor was engaged in farming • Little manufacturing • Few cities developed • Limited support for education

MAP 13.1: COTTON AND OTHER CROPS OF THE SOUTH By 1860 the cotton kingdom extended across the Lower South into the Texas prairie and up the Mississippi River valley. Tobacco and hemp were the staple crops of the Upper South, where they competed with corn and wheat. Rice production was concentrated in the swampy coastal region of South Carolina and Georgia as well as the lower tip of Louisiana. The sugar district was in southern Louisiana.

The Social Structure of the Cotton Kingdom (3) Distribution of Slavery

• More than half the slave population lived in the Deep South

• Almost all slaves worked in agriculture

Slavery as a Labor System

• Plantation system was dependent on slavery • Southern planters saw themselves as landed gentry • Growing hostility to slavery in Europe and the North contributed to a

sense of isolation • Slavery was expanding elsewhere as well, however

MAP 13.2: THE SPREAD OF SLAVERY, 1820 to 1860 Between 1820 and 1860 the slave population of the South shifted south and westward, concentrating especially heavily in coastal South Carolina and Georgia, in the Black Belt of central Alabama and Mississippi (so named because of its dark, rich soil), and in the Mississippi valley.

Class Structure of the White South (1) The Slaveowners

• Of 8 million white southerners, only about 25 percent were of slaveholding families • Most owned only a few

• Planters of consequence (less than 1 percent of the population) needed at least 50 slaves • Planter class owned more than half of all slaves and controlled more

than 90 percent of the region’s wealth

Class Structure of the White South (2) Tidewater and Frontier

• Atlantic Tidewater—bays of the Chesapeake and the South Carolina coast • Birth of the legendary “Old South,” with mansions and cultivated

manners • Cotton kingdom in states such as Mississippi and Arkansas

• Lacked an entrenched elite • Powerful business orientation

SOUTHERN POPULATION, 1860

Class Structure of the White South (3) The Master at Home

• Plantation owners represented a paternalistic ideal • Belief in caring for slaves as one’s children • Everyone on a plantation (white and black) was the master’s

dependent

The Plantation Mistress

• Women grew up with the ideal of domesticity • Multitude of responsibilities in an often confining sphere • Some saw similarities with the lives of slaves

MAP 13.3: A PLANTATION LAYOUT, HOPETON, GEORGIA Often covering a thousand acres or more, a plantation was laid out like a small village and contained several fields and usually extensive uncleared woods. Somewhere near the master’s “big house” were the quarters—slave cabins clustered along one or more streets. Service buildings might include a smokehouse, stables, a gin house (for cotton) or a rice mill, and an overseer’s dwelling. Like most large plantations, Hopeton produced a considerable amount of foodstuffs, but it grew both rice and cotton as staples. Most plantations concentrated on a single cash crop.

Class Structure of the White South (4) Yeoman Farmers

• Well over half the southern white population • About 80 percent were landowners • Most were subsistence famers

• Without slaves, good transportation, and credit, few could compete with planters

• Generally admired planters and supported slavery

Class Structure of the White South (5) A majority of white southerners were members of non-slaveholding yeoman farm families. Ruggedly independent, these families depended on their own labor and often lived under primitive conditions. Basil Hall, an Englishman traveling through the South in 1827 and 1828, sketched members of this Georgia family with the aid of a camera lucida, an optical device that projected an image from real life onto paper, where it could be traced with accuracy. Source: William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan

Class Structure of the White South (6) Poor Whites

• Rough lives on land no one else wanted • Probably a little more than 5 percent of the white population • Most were illiterate and malnourished

• Resented planters, but were even more hostile toward African Americans

• Relied on the status of being, at least, free

The Peculiar Institution (1) Slaves were not free

Slavery was a caste system based on race

Work and Discipline

• Hierarchy of slave workers • House servants, drivers, artisans, field hands

• In the fields for 15 to 16 hours a day, Sundays off • Threat of punishment always present

The Peculiar Institution (2) Slave Maintenance

• Rough clothing and often poorly built housing • Limited medical care • Slave population increased naturally

• High infant mortality • Lower life expectancy than that of white Americans

The Peculiar Institution (3) Resistance

• Slave revolts relatively frequent in Latin America and the Caribbean

• Saint Domingue, 1791 • Revolts relatively rare in the United States

• Gabriel Prosser, 1800; Denmark Vesey, 1822 • Most famous was the violent revolt led by Nat Turner in 1831

• Day-to-day resistance more common • Theft

Slave Culture (1) The Slave Family

• Breakup of families • Slave marriages not recognized as legally binding • Interstate slave trade separated families

• Family ties remained strong • Traditional nuclear family was the rule

• Gender roles were well-defined

Slave Culture (2) Songs and Stories of Protest and Celebration

• Work songs in the field and in the quarters • Folktales with animals as symbolic models

The Lord Calls Us Home

• Christianity among slaves • Secret religious meetings • White-controlled churches

• Song, in the form of “spirituals,” played a central role • Often contained a hidden element of protest

Slave Culture (3) The Slave Community

• Social hierarchy among slaves • Importance of skin color

Free Black Southerners

• Of 4 million black southerners, 260,000 were free • More than 85 percent lived in the Upper South • Some owned slaves

• Boundary between free and enslaved was sometimes blurred

• Restrictions on free African Americans were increased following Nat Turner’s Rebellion, 1831

Slave Culture (4) Slave or free? In 1863 artist Eastman Johnson sketched this confident black man, whose high boots, high-buttoned shirt, and jacket suggest he might have driven a carriage or perhaps was a freedman who worked in the army during the Civil War. We don’t know the man’s identity, but we do know that some slaves had jobs that allowed them to travel unsupervised. Source: National Gallery of Art, Washington

Southern Society and the Defense of Slavery (1) The Virginia Debate of 1832

• Early 1930s saw the South increasingly under attack • Program of gradual emancipation debated in Virginia

• Last significant attempt of white southerners to challenge the peculiar institution

The Proslavery Argument

• Religious, social, and racial arguments • No biblical condemnation of slavery • Africans were inferior • Slaves lived better lives than northern factory workers

Southern Society and the Defense of Slavery (2) Closing Ranks

• Southerners opposed to slavery were harassed, assaulted, driven into exile

• Debate spread to the national political arena • Worldwide, political upheavals and Industrial Revolution

• Effects of the cotton gin and advances in transportation • Democratic reforms

• Disputes between North and South increasingly focused on slavery

Chapter 13: �The Old South �1820 to 1860
The Old South 1820 to 1860
What’s to Come
The Social Structure of the Cotton Kingdom (1)
The Social Structure of the Cotton Kingdom (2)
MAP 13.1: COTTON AND OTHER CROPS OF THE SOUTH
The Social Structure of the Cotton Kingdom (3)
MAP 13.2: THE SPREAD OF SLAVERY, 1820 to 1860
Class Structure�of the White South (1)
Class Structure�of the White South (2)
SOUTHERN POPULATION, 1860
Class Structure�of the White South (3)
MAP 13.3: A PLANTATION LAYOUT, HOPETON, GEORGIA
Class Structure�of the White South (4)
Class Structure of the White South (5)
Class Structure �of the White South (6)
The Peculiar Institution (1)
The Peculiar Institution (2)
The Peculiar Institution (3)
Slave Culture (1)
Slave Culture (2)
Slave Culture (3)
Slave Culture (4)
Southern Society and the Defense of Slavery (1)
Southern Society and the Defense of Slavery (2)