THE SECTIONS GO THEIR WAYS

1
THE SECTIONS GO THEIR WAYS

• Chapter 13

The American Nation, 12e Mark. C. Carnes and John
A. Garraty
2
THE SOUTH

• South less affected by urbanization, European
  immigration, transportation revolution, and
  industrialization
• Region was predominantly agricultural and cotton
  was king
• By 1859 1.3 million out of 4.3 million bales were
  grown beyond the Mississippi
• Upper south Virginia was leading tobacco producer
  but states beyond the Appalachians were raising
  more than half then crop, encouraged by
  introduction of Bright Yellow
• Older sections of Maryland, Virginia, and North
  Carolina shifted to the type of diversified
  farming associated with Northeast

3
THE ECONOMICS OF SLAVERY

• Increased importance of cotton strengthened the
  hold of slavery on the region
• Price of slaves rose
• 1850s prime field hand was worth as much as
  1,800
• 3x as much as cost in 1820
• Crop value per slave jumped from less than 15
  early in century to more than 125 in 1859
• Slaves in Deep South brought several hundred
  dollars more per head than in the older regimes
• Mississippi took in 10,000 slaves a year
• By 1830 black population exceeded white
• Transfer of more than a million slaves from
  seaboard states to west

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THE ECONOMICS OF SLAVERY

• Slave trading became big business
• 1850s there were about 50 dealers in Charleston
  and 200 in New Orleans
• Impact on slaves was disastrous
• Husbands and wives, parent and children were
  separated
• One study suggests one-third of all first slave
  marriages in upper south were broken by forced
  separation
• Nearly half of all children were separated from
  at least one parent
• As slaves became more expensive, ownership of
  slaves became more concentrated
• In 1860 only about 46,000 of 8 million white
  residents of slave states had as many as 20
  slaves

6
THE ECONOMICS OF SLAVERY

• Most efficient size of plantation worked by gangs
  of slaves was 1,000 to 2,000 acres
• Majority of farmers in south cultivated no more
  than 200 acres
• Many cultivated fewer than 100 acres
• On eve of Civil War only one family in four owned
  any slaves at all
• Yeoman farmers grew staple crops, owned a few
  slaves, worked besides them in the fields,
  hardworking, self-reliant, and moderately
  prosperous
• Poor white trash of pine barrens and remote
  valleys of Appalachians scratched a meager
  subsistence from substandard soils and lived in
  ignorance and squalor

7
THE ECONOMICS OF SLAVERY

• Well managed plantations yielded annual profits
  of 10 or more
• Money invested in southern agriculture earned at
  least moderate return
• After allowing for the cost of land and capital,
  average plantation slave earned cotton worth
  78.78 in 1859
• 32 a year to feed, clothe and house a slave
• 60 of product of slave labor was expropriated by
  the masters

8
THE ECONOMICS OF SLAVERY

• South failed to develop locally owned marketing
  and transportation facilities
• 1840 cost 2.85 to move a bale of cotton from the
  farm to a seaport
• Additional charges for storage, insurance, port
  fees, and freight to a European port exceeded 15
• Most of this money earned by middlemen outside of
  south
• Middlemen also supplied most of foreign goods
  purchased by planters
• Nearly everyone in New England could read and
  write while over 20 of white Southerners could
  not

9
ANTEBELLUM PLANTATION LIFE

• Medium to large operation employing 20 or more
  slaves
• Masters house with complement of barns and
  stables
• Kitchen
• Smokehouse
• Washhouse
• Home for the overseer
• Perhaps a schoolhouse
• A grist mill
• A forge
• Slave quarters
• Husbands and wives did not function in separate
  spheres though functions were different and
  gender related

10
ANTEBELLUM PLANTATION LIFE

• Planters purchased fine clothes, furniture and
  china, as well as other manufactured goods
• Plantations were also busy centers of household
  manufacture
• Clothes for slaves (except shoes)
• Everyday clothing of their own children
• Bedding and other textiles
• Spinning, weaving, and sewing were womens work
• Food was raised on the plantation except for
  coffee, tea, and a few other food items

11
ANTEBELLUM PLANTATION LIFE

• Master was in chargesystem paternalistic
• Wife had immense responsibilities
• Supervising servants
• Nursing the sick
• Taking care of vegetable and flower gardens
• Planning meals
• Seeing to the education of her own children and
  training of young slaves
• Generally married in their teens so had to learn
  by doing

12
ANTEBELLUM PLANTATION LIFE

• Majority of slaves of both sexes were field hands
  who labored on the land from dawn to dusk
• Household servants and artisans, any slave but
  old and infirm, might be called on for such labor
  when needed
• Slave women were expected to cook for their own
  families and do other chores working after
  working in fields

13
ANTEBELLUM PLANTATION LIFE

• Children, free and slave, were cared for by
  household servants
• Infants were brought to their mothers in the
  fields for nursing several times a day
• Slave children were not put to work until they
  were 6 or 7 years old and until 10 they were only
  given small tasks
• Slave cabins were simple and crude single dark
  room with a fireplace

14
THE SOCIOLOGY OF SLAVERY

• Whipping
• 20 lashes for ordinary offenses shirking work or
  stealing
• 39 for more serious offenses running away
• Sometimes slaves were whipped to death, though by
  1821 master could be charged with murder if
  caused slave death through excessive punishment
  (conviction resulted in relatively minimal fine)
• Most owners provided adequate housing, clothing,
  and food
• Infant mortality among slaves was twice that of
  whites
• Life expectancy was five years less

15
THE SOCIOLOGY OF SLAVERY

• U.S. only country in western hemisphere where
  slave population grew by national increase
• After ending of slave trade in 1808, black
  population grew at nearly same rate as white
• From founding of Jamestown to Civil War, only
  slightly more than 500,000 slaves were imported
  (5 of slaves carried to New World) yet in 1860
  there were 4 million blacks in U.S.
• Slaves had no rights
• Marriages had no legal status

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THE SOCIOLOGY OF SLAVERY

• Slave religion mixture of African and
  Christianity
• Religious meetings provided slaves with the
  opportunity to organize
• Sustained sense of own worth
• As price of slaves rose and northern opposition
  grew, slave system hardened
• 1822 after conspiracy of Denmark Vesey was
  exposed, 37 slaves executed and 30 deported
  though no overt act had occurred
• Louisiana 16 slaves were decapitated after an
  uprising
• Nat Turner uprising in Virginia in 1831 cost 57
  whites their lives
• White southerners treated runaways almost as
  brutally as rebels

17
THE SOCIOLOGY OF SLAVERY

• After Nat Turner revolt interest in abolishing
  slavery vanished in white south
• Southern states made it increasingly difficult
  for masters to free slaves
• During 1859 only about 3,000 were given their
  freedom (.00075)
• Slavery did not flourish in urban settings and
  cities did not flourish where slavery was
  important
• Southern cities were small
• Slave labor minor since harder to control in
  urban setting

18
THE SOCIOLOGY OF SLAVERY

• Southern whites considered existence of free
  blacks undesirable
• Undercut notion that blacks helpless on their own
• Set bad example for slaves
• Set limits on them but, in the end, needed their
  labor
• 54,000 slaves were brought to U.S. illegally
  after end of slave trade
• U.S. Navy seized more than 50 suspected slavers
  1840-1860

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PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF SLAVERY

• Slavery had a corrosive effect on the
  personalities of southerners, black and white
• Bore heavily on all slaves sense of self worth
• Most slaves appeared resigned to their fate
• Slaves had strong family and group attachments
  and a complex culture of their own
• By a mixture of subterfuge, accommodation, and
  passive resistance, slaves erected defenses
  against exploitation, achieving a sense of
  community that helped sustain the psychic
  integrity of the individuals
• Slavery discouraged, if not extinguished,
  independent judgment and self-reliance

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PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF SLAVERY

• Whites were also harmed by slavery
• Associating working for others with servility
  discouraged many poor white Southerners from
  hiring out to make a stake
• Slavery provided the weak, shiftless, and
  unsuccessful with a scapegoat that made their own
  situation easier to bear but harder to escape
• Patriarchal nature of slave system reinforced
  tendency toward male dominance over wives and
  children
• Power of ownership could be brutalizing
• Slavery caused basically decent people to commit
  countless petty cruelties

21
MANUFACTURING IN THE SOUTH

• Small flour and lumber mills flourished
• Rope making plants in Kentucky
• Commercial cotton presses existed in a number of
  southern cities
• Iron and coal were mined in Virginia, Kentucky,
  and Tennessee
• 1850s Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond did an
  annual business of about 1 million

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MANUFACTURING IN THE SOUTH

• Availability of raw materials and abundance of
  waterpower on Appalachian slopes made it possible
  to manufacture textiles profitably
• 1825 thriving factory in Fayetteville, North
  Carolina
• William Greggs factory at Graniteville, South
  Carolina, established 1846, was employing 300
  people by 1850
• Yet in 1850 all of South Carolina employed fewer
  than 900 in textile manufacturing
• The town of Lowell, Massachusetts, had more
  spindles in 1860 than the entire South
• Less than 15 of all goods manufactured in United
  States came from the South

23
THE NORTHERN INDUSTRIAL JUGGERNAUT

• Immediately after War of 1812 the United States
  was manufacturing less than 200 million worth of
  goods annually
• In 1859 northeastern states alone produced 1.27
  billion of national total of almost 2 billion
• Factory system made great strides
• Development of anthracite coal mines fields in
  Pennsylvania
• Great receptivity to technological change

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THE NORTHERN INDUSTRIAL JUGGERNAUT

• With skilled labor in short supply, pressure to
  replace labor with machines was great
• By 1850, the U.S. led the world in the
  manufacture of goods that required the use of
  precision instruments
• Clocks, pistols, rifles, and locks were
  outstanding
• Every year new natural resources were discovered
  and made available
• Expansion of agriculture produced an ever larger
  supply of raw materials for mills and factories

25
THE NORTHERN INDUSTRIAL JUGGERNAUT

• Eight of the ten leading industries relied on
  farm products
• Flour milling
• Cotton textiles
• Lumber
• Mens shoes
• Mens clothing
• Leather
• Woolen goods
• Liquor

26
THE NORTHERN INDUSTRIAL JUGGERNAUT

• By 1850s prejudice against corporation had broken
  down
• By end of decade northern and northwestern states
  had all passed incorporation laws
• Corporations made possible the larger
  accumulation of capital
• Illustrating shift National Academy of Science
  refused federal charter in 1840 but easily
  granted one in 1863

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THE NORTHERN INDUSTRIAL JUGGERNAUT

• Industrial growth led to increase in demand for
  labor
• Skilled artisans, technicians, and toolmakers
  earned good wages and found it relatively easy to
  become independent craftsmen or small
  manufacturers
• Expanding frontier drained off much agricultural
  labor that might have gone into industry
• New towns of west absorbed eastern artisans
• Pay of unskilled worker was never enough to
  support a family decently
• New machines weakened the bargaining power of
  artisans by making skill less important
• Immigration increased rapidly in the 1830s and
  1840s

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THE NORTHERN INDUSTRIAL JUGGERNAUT

• Growth of capital
• European investors poured large sums of money
  into booming American industry
• American savings
• Gold from gold rush
• Other important factors
• Improvements in transportation
• Population growth
• Absence of internal tariff barriers
• Relatively high per capita wealth

29
A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS

• Immigrant only developed as a term after the
  creation of the United States and nationalism
  associated with it
• Native population disliked immigrants
• Immigrants developed their own prejudices
• Irish disliked blacksoften competed for same
  jobs
• Most immigrants adopted views of local majority
• Unskilled immigrants caused serious disruptions
  of economic patterns wherever they appeared
• By 1860 Irish immigrants made up more than 50 of
  the labor force in New England textile mills

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HOW WAGE EARNERS LIVED

• Many wage earners lived in urban slums with
  extremely crowded conditions
• City streets were littered with trash
• Recreational facilities were almost non-existent
• Police and fire protection were inadequate
• Early factory towns families had supplemented
  incomes with gardens but not a choice in
  industrial slums
• Horace Greeley figured minimum weekly support for
  a family of 5 in 1851 was 10.57 while a factory
  hand rarely made 5
• Wife and children therefore also had to work

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HOW WAGE EARNERS LIVED

• Unions
• Relatively few workers belonged
• Most unions were craft unions
• Was a National Trades Union prior to Panic of
  1837
• Skilled workers improved lot in 1840s 1850s
• Working day declined from 12 and one half hours
  to 10 to 11 hours
• Many states passed 10 hour laws and laws
  regulating child labor (poorly enforced)
• Effective mechanics lien laws
• Commonwealth v. Hunt (1842, Massachusetts)
  established legality of labor unions

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HOW WAGE EARNERS LIVED

• Flush times of 1850s revived labor unions
• Strikes and national organizations
• Panic of 1857 ended most of this
• Why Unions not very successful
• Craftsmen took little interest in unskilled
  workers
• Few common laborers considered themselves part of
  a permanent working class
• Wage labor seemed un-American, a violation of
  republican values of freedom and independence

33
PROGRESS AND POVERTY

• Prior to Civil War, United States was a land of
  opportunity a democratic society with a
  prosperous, expanding economy and few class
  distinctions people had a high standard of
  living compared to Europeans
• Within this country existed a class of miserably
  underpaid and depressed unskilled workers who
  were worse off materially than almost any
  southern slave
• In 1848 more than 56,000 New Yorkers (1/4
  population) was receiving some form of public
  relief
• Police drive in New York in 1860 brought in
  nearly 500 beggars
• Economic opportunities were great and taxation
  was little so the rich got richer
• While political opportunity for white men was
  equal, economic opportunity was increasingly
  skewed

34
FOREIGN COMMERCE

• Imports and Exports
• Increased erratically in the 1820s and 1830s
• Leapt forward in next 20 years
• Remained primarily exporter of raw materials and
  importer of manufactured goods and mostly
  imported more than exported
• Cotton still most valuable export
• 1860 191 million out of total 333 million
• Textiles number one import followed by iron
  products
• Great Britain both best purchaser and best
  supplier
• 52 packets operated between New York and Europe
  in 1845
• Accelerated tendency for trade to concentrate in
  New York and a few other port cities
  (Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans)

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FOREIGN COMMERCE

• Whaling boomed between 1830 and 1860
• By mid 1850s sperm oil sold at more than
  1.75/gallon
• Country exported an average of 2.7 million worth
  of whale oil and whalebone
• New Bedford boasted a whaling fleet of 300
  vessels and population of 25,000
• Whalers routinely cleared 100 profit
• By 1850s average vessel was three times size of
  those built 30 years earlier
• Clipper ships with undreamed of speeds
  emergedsailing around Cape Horn to San Francisco
  dropped from 5 to 6 months to three

36
STEAM CONQUERS THE ATLANTIC

• Early problems with steamships
• Early models were unsafe in high seas
• Had to carry tons of coal which reduced space for
  cargo
• By late 1840s steamships were capturing most of
  the passenger traffic, mail contracts and
  first-class freight
• Steamers were soon crossing Atlantic in 10 days
• Average speed better than clipper ships

37
STEAM CONQUERS THE ATLANTIC

• Steamship, especially iron ship, which had
  greater cargo capacity and was stronger and less
  costly to maintain, took away advantages of
  American ship builders
• American lumber cheap but British excelled at
  iron technology
• Government efforts to aid shipbuilding were
  abandoned in 1858
• Shipping rates decreased due to
  competition,government subsidy, and technological
  advance
• Mid 1820s to mid 1850s cost of moving a pound of
  cotton from New York to Liverpool fell from 1
  cent to one-third cent
• Transatlantic passengers could obtain best
  accommodations on the fastest ships for under
  200
• Good accommodations on slower ships could be had
  for 75
• Ships went to Europe with bulky raw materials and
  returned with manufactured goods that failed to
  take up roomFilled rest with immigrants

38
CANALS AND RAILROADS

• Canals in 1830 there were 1,277 miles of canal
  in U.S. by 1840 there were 3,326 miles
• 1845 Erie Canal was drawing 2/3 of east-west
  traffic from New York
• 1847 more than half of traffic came from west of
  Buffalo
• 1851 more than two-thirds did and volume of
  western commerce was 20x more than in 1836
• Value of western goods reaching New Orleans in
  same period increased only 2 and a half times

39
CANALS AND RAILROADS

• Railroads
• 1830 Baltimore Ohio, first American line,
  carried 80,000 passengers over 13 mile stretch of
  track
• By 1833, Charleston, South Carolina, had a line
  reaching 136 miles
• By 1840 the U.S. had 3,328 miles of trackequal
  to canal mileage and double the railroad mileage
  of Europe
• Early railroad did not compete with canals
  because
• Did not generally cross Appalachians
• Were not organized into systems
• Often used different track widths

40
CANALS AND RAILROADS

• Early problems with railroads
• Engineering issues such as steep grades and sharp
  curves
• Modifications in design of locomotives enabled
  trains to negotiate sharp curves
• Sparks from wood burning locomotives caused fire
• Engines that could burn hard coal eliminated due
  to danger of fires
• Wooden rails topped with strap iron wore out
  quickly and broke loose under vibration
• Iron T-rail and use of crossties set in loose
  gravel to reduce vibration increased track
  durability and enabled heavier equipment

41
CANALS AND RAILROADS

• Between 1848 and 1852 railroad mileage doubled
  and double again by 1855
• By 1860 U.S. had 30,636 miles of track
• Four lines built tracks from eastern coast to
  interior valley
• 1851 Erie Railroad, longest in the world with 537
  miles, linked Hudson River with Lake Erie
• 1852 Baltimore Ohio reached Wheeling, Virginia
• 1853 New York Central was formed from 8 shorter
  lines
• 1858 Pennsylvania Railroad completed a line from
  Philadelphia to Pittsburgh

42
FINANCING THE RAILROADS

• Private investors supplied about three-fourths of
  money invested in railroads before 1860 (more
  than 800 million in 1850s alone)
• Much of capital from local merchants and
  businessmen and from farmers along proposed
  rights-of-way
• Funds easy to raise because did not have to pay
  full value of stock but merely respond to
  periodic calls for partial payment
• If road made money, much of additional mileage
  could be paid for out of earnings from first
  sections built

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FINANCING THE RAILROADS

• For less well placed railroads, public aid was
  necessary for part of costs
• Towns, counties, and states lent money to
  railroads and invested in their stock
• Granted special privileges, such as exemption
  from taxation and right to condemn property
• Few cases, states built and operated railroads as
  public corporations
• 1850 scheme for granting federal lands to states
  to build a line from Lake Michigan to the Gulf of
  Mexico drafted both houses
• Success of initial grant led to further ones
  benefiting more than 40 railroads
• Frequently capitalists more interested in making
  money from railroad construction than from
  operation

45
RAILROADS AND THE ECONOMY

• Railroads helped determine what land was used and
  how profitably it could be farmed
• Land Grant railroads stimulated agricultural
  expansion by advertising their lands widely and
  selling farm sites at low rates on liberal terms
• Access to world markets gave farmers of upper
  Mississippi incentive to increase output
• Agricultural wages rose sharply due to scarcity

46
RAILROADS AND THE ECONOMY

• New tools and machines appeared to help ease
  labor shortage
• Steel plowshare John Deere, 1839
• Mechanical reaper Cyrus Hall McCormick (two
  workers could cut 14 times as much as with
  scythes)
• Railroad created transformations
• Chicago in 1850 no RR tracks but by 1855 it was
  the terminus of 2,200 miles
• Real estate values and the buying and selling of
  land increased
• Spurred regional concentration of industry and
  increase in size of business unit
• Stimulated growth of investment banking
• First to employ large numbers of salaried mangers
  and to developed internal structure with
  carefully defined lines of responsibility

47
RAILROADS AND THE ECONOMY

• Railroad consumed half the nations output of bar
  and sheet iron in 1860
• Proliferation of trunk lines and competition of
  canal system led to sharp decline in freight and
  passenger rates
• Railroads engaged in wars to capture business
• By Civil War cost less than 1 cent per ton per
  mile to ship via canal and only slightly more
  than 2 cents on the railroads
• Cheap transportation had a revolutionary effect
  on western agriculture
• Center of American wheat production shifted to
  Illinois, Wisconsin, and Indiana
• Boomed especially when Crimean War (1853-1856)
  and European crop failures increased demand

48
RAILROADS AND THE SECTIONAL CONFLICT

• Increased production and cheap transportation
  boosted the western farmers income and standard
  of living
• Problems
• Became dependent on middlemen
• Overproduction became a problem
• Buying a farm required more capital
• Proportion of farm laborers and tenants increased

49
RAILROADS AND THE SECTIONAL CONFLICT

• East-West linkage had fateful effects on politics
• Stimulated nationalism and became a force for
  preservation of the Union
• When the Mississippi ceased to be essential to
  them, citizens of the upper valley could afford
  to be more hostile to slavery and especially to
  its westward expansion
• South failed to create railroad network of its
  own
• Scattered population of South
• Paucity of passenger traffic
• Seasonal nature of much of freight business
• Absence of large cities
• Placed too much reliance on Mississippi River
• Leaders not interested

50
THE ECONOMY ON THE EVE OF THE CIVIL WAR

• Between mid-1840s and mid-1850s the United States
  experienced one of the most remarkable periods of
  growth in the history of the world
• 1857 serious collapse as grain prices fell in
  wake of Crimean war and return of Russian grain
  to the market
• Checked agricultural expansion which hurt
  railroads and cut down on demand for manufactures
• Unemployment increased
• Run on banks which had to suspend specie payment
• Downturn mainly effected upper Mississippi Valley
  while South and elsewhere minimally effected

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WEBSITES

• Been Here So Long Selections from the WPA
  American Slave Narratives
• http//newdeal.feri.org/asn/index.htm
• The African American Odyssey
• http//digital.nypl.org/schomburg/images_aa19
• The Settlement of African Americans in Liberia
• http//www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/perstor.html
• Images of African Americans from the Nineteenth
  Century
• http//digital.nypl.org/schomburg/images_aa19