The Old South 13

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The Old South (13)

• The Social Structure of the Cotton Kingdom
• The Upper South
• Boom Country Economy
• The Cotton Kingdom
• Slavery Industrialization
• The Profitability Issue

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Learning Outcomes Old South

• Understand the economy of the rural South
• Understand the nature 19th century slavery
• Account for the development of African American
  culture as both a labor and social system
• Be able to describe the southern defense of
  slavery that develops after 1830

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Chapter 13 The Old South

• Preview In the decades before the Civil War,
  the rural South depended on the export of staple
  crops like rice, tobacco, sugar, and cottonand
  the slave labor used to produce them.
• The Highlights
• The Social Structure of the Cotton Kingdom
• Class Structure of the White South
• The Peculiar Institution
• Slave Culture
• Southern Society the Defense of Slavery

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The Old South (13)

• Slaveholding Society Class Structure
• The Planters World
• Tidewater
• Frontier
• Planters Slaves
• Yoeman Farmers
• Poor Whites

Monmouth Hall Natchez, Mississippi
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The Old South

• The Peculiar Institution
• Work and Discipline
• Slave Maintenance
• The Black Experience
• under Slavery
• Slave Resistance

C. Seaver Jr.s photograph of Gordon, 1863

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The Old South

• Plantation Women
• White Black
• The Southern Defense
• of Slavery

Contemporary photograph of Oprah Winfrey in film
Beloved, 1998

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The Old South (13)

• The Black Experience
• under Slavery
• The Slave Family
• Slave songs
• Slave stories
• African American Religion
• Free Blacks

Free African American Market Woman
Harriet Tubman

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"Black and White Slavery, by Southern
apologist, E. W. Clay, 1841
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The Old South
"Black and White Slavery, by Noththern
apologist for slavery, E. W. Clay, 1841 Contrasts
the plight of Britain's abused "white slaves"
(actually factory workers, portrayed in the right
panel) and America's "contented" black slaves.
Here he shows an attractive and wealthy,
slave-owning white family, including a husband,
his wife, and their two children. The young
daughter plays with a lean greyhound which stands
before them. The son gestures toward an elderly
black couple with a small child sitting at their
feet. A group of happy slaves dance in the
background. The old slave says, "God Bless you
massa! you feed and clothe us. When we are sick
you nurse us, and when too old to work, you
provide for us!" The master vows piously, "These
poor creatures are a sacred legacy from my
ancestors and while a dollar is left me, nothing
shall be spared to increase their comfort and
happiness." Harpers Weekly

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The Social Structure of the Cotton Kingdom

• The Boom Country Economy
• Cotton pushes westward, 1810s-1850s
• Southern prosperity
• Single-crop agriculture exhausts the soil
• The Upper Souths New Orientation
• Interstate slave trade
• Upper South to Lower South

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• The Rural South
• Lack of manufacturing
• Absence of cities only 1 out of 10 people live
  in urban areas
• Distribution of Slavery
• Centered in the Deep South
• Most slaves work in agriculture
• Slavery as a Labor System
• A profitable institution for slaveowners
• Aristocratic planter values

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Class Structure of the White South

• The Slaveowners
• 25 of 8 million whites own slaves (1860)
• Typical plantation 25-50 slaves
• Tidewater Frontier
• Tidewater Eastern Seaboard, where slavery is
  more established
• Frontier the interior, where slavery is newer

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• The Master at Home
• Paternalism belief in caring for slaves as ones
  children
• Everyone on plantation is the masters dependent
• The Plantation Mistress
• Domestic duties
• Some women identify with slaves
• The social problem of miscegenation

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• Yeoman Farmers
• Half of southern white population
• 80 are landowners
• Limited economic opportunity
• Surprising absence of class conflict with
  planters
• Poor whites
• 5 of white population
• Most illiterate malnourished
• Hate African Americans more than planters

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The Peculiar Institution

• Work Discipline
• Hierarchy of slave workers house servants,
  drivers, artisans, field hands
• Long work days 15 hours per day
• Usually have Sundays off
• Slave Maintenance
• Planters provide basic clothing shelter
• Life expectancy 8 years shorter than whites

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Slaves learned to outwit their masters by
wearing an impenetrable mask around whites, one
bondsman recalled. How much of joy, of sorrow,
of misery and anguish have they hidden from their
tormentors.

• Resistance
• Many slave revolts in Latin America
• Gabriel Prosser (1800)
• Denmark Vesey (1822)
• Nat Turner (1831)
• Day-to-day resistance is more common
• Hidden emotions

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Slave Culture

• The Slave Family
• Nearly half of couples face breakup from being
  sold in interstate slave trade
• Family ties, both nuclear and extended, remain
  strong
• Clear gender roles

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• Slave Songs and Stories
• Work songs in the field in the quarter
• Folktales continue African traditions
• Steal Away to Jesus
• Slaves form their own form of Christianity
• Slave preachers
• Prevalence of spirituals

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Funerals were critical to enslaved Africans, and
were attended by everyone in a community as well
as those who could sneak off from surrounding
plantations. They provided a ritual in which
Africans of diverse traditions could come
together to respect the dead. In many cases,
whites banned black funerals, fearing the
camaraderie and potential for rebellion.

Louisiana Plantation Burial, painted about
1860 by John Antrobus
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• The Slave Community
• Defined hierarchy in slave quarters
• Importance of skin color
• Free Black Southerners
• 260,000 of 4 million black Southerners are free
• 85 lived in the Upper South
• Try to develop close connections with influential
  whites

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Southern Society the Defense of Slavery

• The Virginia Debate of 1832
• William Lloyd Garrisons The Liberator
• Nat Turners insurrection
• Legislature argues bitterly over ending slavery
• Voted 73 - 58 to refuse consideration of
  legislation banning slavery

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• The Proslavery Argument
• Religious justification slaves descendants of
  Canaan
• Social racial justification Africans inferior
• Closing Ranks
• Jacksonian Democrats defend slavery
• Sections the Nation
• North South unified in spite of social
  economic differences

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Keywords and Terms

• Cotton Gin
• Short-staple Cotton
• J.D.B. DeBow
• Hinton R. Helper
• Harriet Beecher Stowe
• African Methodist Episcopal (AME)
• underground railroad

• Eli Whitney
• North Star
• principle of fear
• Nat Turner, 1831
• George Fitzhugh
• invisible institution

Cotton Gin 1793
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Learning Outcomes Old South

• Understand the economy of the rural South
• Understand the nature 19th century slavery
• Account for the development of African American
  culture as both a labor and social system
• Be able to describe the southern defense of
  slavery that develops after 1830