Chapter 14 Section 3

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Chapter 14 Section 3 4Cotton Kingdom in the
South
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EQ

• How did the cotton gin affect the Southern way
  of life?

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The Cotton Kingdom

• Cotton was so profitable, that the south did not
  think it needed to invest in factories.
• Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. It was a
  simple machine that separated the seeds from
  cotton. It had an enormous effect on the south.
• By 1850, southern planters were growing over 2
  million bales of cotton. Planters learned that
  if they planted on the same land year after year,
  the soil would ware out. This caused planters to
  move westward in search of new land.
• All cotton producing land was known as the cotton
  kingdom.

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Slavery Spreads Across the South

• As cotton spread across the south, so did
  slavery. Cotton would be cleaned by the cotton
  gin, but it still had to be picked and planted by
  hand.
• Slaves got no profit from the land. They were
  little more than property. The money made on the
  plantation was used to buy more slaves and more
  land.
• The south had some industry(factories) but not a
  lot.
• As long as cotton remained king, southerners
  believed they could look to the future with
  confidence.

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Real Slavery Statistics

• The south is often seen as the land of big
  plantations worked by hundreds of slaves. These
  did exist, however most white southerners were
  not rich planters. In fact, most whites owned no
  slaves at all!!!
• One out of thirty families owned twenty slaves,
  and less than one percent of the families in the
  south owned fifty or more slaves. These people
  were known as the plantocracy because they ruled
  the south. These rich planters often became
  southern political leaders, often hiring
  overseers to run the day-to-day affairs of the
  plantation.
• About 75 of southern whites owned small farms
  and, if they were lucky, might have owned one or
  two slaves. These families worked in the fields
  with their slaves.

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Free Blacks in the South

• The south was home to nearly 200,000 free African
  Americans. These people bought or were given
  their freedom, and were able to make a life for
  themselves.
• Whites in the south did not like free blacks
  living their. Whites had been justifying slavery
  by saying that black people couldnt take care of
  themselves. Free African Americans proved that
  theory wrong.

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Slave Codes

• By 1860, enslaved African Americans made up 1/3
  of the southern population. With such a big
  population, the south needed a way to control the
  slaves. They did this through slave codes.
  These were laws that were aimed at keeping slaves
  from running away or rebelling. Under slave
  codes, slaves were forbidden to gather in groups
  of more than three. They could not leave their
  owners land without a pass. They could not own a
  gun. Slave codes even made it a crime for slaves
  to learn how to read and write.
• There were some slave codes that protected slaves
  from abuse, but slaves didnt have the right to
  testify in court. So what good are those laws?
  The only real protection that slaves had was that
  owners looked at their slaves as valuable
  property.

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A Hard Life

• Needless to say, life was hard for slaves. They
  worked hard, 16 hour days. Many times, the only
  things that slaves had, their families, were torn
  apart. Sometimes husbands and wives would be
  sold to different plantations. Other times
  children would be separated from their parents.
  Many times, plantations became one big family
  where everyone helped raise the children.
• Many slaves found their comfort in Christianity.
  They liked stories like the Hebrews escaping
  slavery.
• Slaves did resist slavery. Most just did things
  around the farm they worked slowly, they broke
  tools, they destroyed crops and stole food.
  There were some violent rebellions too. A slave
  named Nat Turner led a group of slaves through
  the south killing 57 whites. He and his
  followers were caught and hanged. Revolts were
  rare, however. Since whites were cautious and
  well armed, a revolt by African Americans had
  almost no chance of success.