Chapter 10 The South and Slavery 1790 – 1850s Chapter 10 The South and Slavery 1790 – 1850s OUT...

Chapter 10The South and Slavery

1790 – 1850s

Chapter 10The South and Slavery

1790 – 1850s

OUT OF MANY

A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

© 2009 Pearson Education, Inc.

Part One:

Introduction

2© 2009 Pearson Education, Inc.

Chapter Focus Questions

How did attitudes in the South toward slavery change after the invention of the cotton gin?

What is a “slave society”?

What role did religion play in African American slave communities?

What were the values of yeoman farmers?

Who were the planter elite?Why was the white South increasingly defensive after 1830?


Part Two:

American Communities: Cotton Communities in the Old

Southwest


American Communities: Cotton Communities in the Old Southwest

Samuel Townes, from a wealthy South Carolina family rebelled and moved to Alabama to create a plantation.Panic of 1837 devastated his ambitions.Community support was lacking due to such a rapid expansion westward.African Americans knew how to build stronger communities.


Part Three:

King Cotton and Southern Expansion


Cotton and Expansion into the Old Southwest

Map: The South Expands, 1790-1850Eli Whitney’s and Catherine Greene’s cotton gin made cultivating short-staple cotton profitable, revolutionizing the Southern economy. After the War of 1812 Southerners expanded into Western Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, driving out the Indians who already lived there, A generation later they poured into Louisiana and Texas. Each surge of expansion ignited a speculative frenzy. The expansion of cotton was concentrated in the rich soil sections of the South known as the black belt.


MAP 10.1 The South Expands, 1790–1850 This map shows the dramatic effect cotton production had on southern expansion. From the original six states of 1790, westward expansion, fueled by the search for new cotton lands, added another six states by 1821, and three more by 1850.


This 1855 illustration of black stevedores loading heavy bales of cotton onto waiting steamboats in New Orleans is an example of the South’s dependence on cotton and the slave labor that produced it.


Slavery the Mainspring – Again

Map: Cotton Production and the Slave Population, 1820-60

Southern slavery financed northern industrialization.


MAP 10.2a Cotton Production and the Slave Population, 1820. In the forty-years from 1820 to 1860, cotton production grew dramatically in both quantity and extent. Rapid westward expansion meant that by 1860 cotton production was concentrated in the black belt (so called for its rich soils) in the Lower South. As cotton production moved west and south, so did the enslaved African American population that produced it, causing a dramatic rise in the internal slave trade. SOURCE : Sam Bowers Hilliard, Atlas of Antebellum Southern Agriculture (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,1984).

See next map


MAP 10.2b Cotton Production and the Slave Population, 1860.SOURCE : Sam Bowers Hilliard, Atlas of Antebellum Southern Agriculture (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,1984).


A Slave Society in a Changing World

The growth of the cotton economy committed the South to slavery.

In other parts of the nation, attitudes toward slavery were changing.

Slave states were losing their political dominance.


The Internal Slave Trade

Map: Internal Slave Trade, 1820-60

The cotton boom caused a huge increase in slave trade.

Slaves were gathered in pens before moving south by train or boat.

On foot, slaves moved on land in coffles.

The size of the slave trade made a mockery of Southern claims of benevolence.


MAP 10.3 Internal Slave Trade, 1820-60 Between 1820 and 1860, nearly 50 percent of the slave population of the Upper South was sold south to labor on the cotton plantations of the Lower South. This map shows the various routes by which they were “sold down the river,” shipped by boat or marched south. SOURCE: Historical Atlas of the United States (Washington DC: National Geographic Society,1988).


The immense size of the internal slave trade made sights like this commonplace on southern roads. Groups of slaves, chained together in gangs called coffles, were marched from their homes in the Upper South to cities in the Lower South, where they were auctioned to new owners.


This engraving from Harper’s Weekly shows slaves, dressed in new clothing, lined up outside a New Orleans slave pen for inspection by potential buyers before the actual auction began. They were often threatened with punishment if they did not present a good appearance and manner that would fetch a high price.


Part Four:

The African American Community


The Maturation of the American Slave System

Congress banned the slave trade in 1808 so the South relied on natural increase and the internal slave trade. Chart: Cotton Exports as a Percentage of All US Exports, 1800-1860The slave population grew from 700,000 in 1790 to 4 million in 1860.African Americans had close bonds through the experience of slavery.The family and the church were the most important aspects of African American life.


FIGURE 10.1 Cotton Exports as a Percentage of All U.S. Exports, 1800–1860 One consequence of the growth of cotton production was its importance in international trade. The growing share of the export market, and the great value (nearly $200 million in 1860) led southern slave owners to believe that “Cotton Is King.” They believed that the importance of cotton to the national economy entitled the South to a commanding voice in national policy.

SOURCE: Sam Bowers Hilliard, Atlas of Antebellum Southern Agriculture (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,1984), pp.67 –71.


The Price of Survival

The growth of the slave population was due to the high fertility rate of African American women.

Health remained a life long issue for slaves and pregnant women were usually malnourished.

Slaves were more at risk due to poor living conditions.


From Cradle to Grave

Slavery was a life long labor system.

Southern slave owners claimed that taking care of the slave was an act of benevolence.

Black children had no schooling.

By 1850, 55 percent of the slave population was engaged in cotton growing.

Map: Distribution of Slave Labor, 1850


FIGURE 10.2 Distribution of Slave Labor, 1850 In 1850, 55 percent of all slaves worked in cotton, 10 percent in tobacco, and another 10 percent in rice, sugar, and hemp. Ten percent worked in mining, lumbering, industry, and construction, and 15 percent worked as domestic servants. Slaves were not generally used to grow corn, the staple crop of the yeoman farmer.


Field Work and the Gang System of Labor

75 percent of slaves were field workers.

Work was extremely tedious.

Slaves aged fast in this regime due to poor diet and heavy labor.


House Servants

One third of female slaves in Virginia worked as a house servant by 1800.

House servants were better fed and clothed and had access to more information.

The most unpleasant thing was the constant presence of white people.


Artisans and Skilled Workers

A small number of slaves were skilled workers.

The wages of these slaves belonged to the owner not the slave.

Southern cities offered free blacks the opportunities to work in skilled occupations.


Thomas Jefferson used this revolving bookstand with five adjustable bookrests at Monticello. It was built of walnut in 1810 by slaves from the plantation whom Jefferson had trained as skilled carpenters.


Slave Families

Slave marriages were:not recognized by law, frequently not respected by masters,a haven of love and intimacy for the slaves.

Parents gave children a supportive and protective kinship network. Slave families were often split up.Separated children drew upon supportive networks of family and friends.


Slave quarters built by slave owners, like these pictured on a South Carolina plantation, provided more than the basic shelter. Slave quarters were the center of the African American community life that developed during slavery.

SOURCE: Collection of The New -York Historical Society. Photograph by G.N. Barnard, Bagoe Collection, ca. 1865, negative number 48169.


Part Five:

Freedom and Resistance


African American Religion

Slaves were not permitted to practice African religions, though numerous survivals did work their way into the slaves’ folk culture.

The first and second Great Awakenings introduced Christianity to many slaves.

In the 1790s, African American churches began emerging.

Whites hoped religion would make the slaves obedient.

Slaves found a liberating message that strengthened their sense of community and offered them spiritual freedom.


African cultural patterns persisted in the preference for night funerals and for solemn pageantry and song, as depicted in British artist John Antrobus’s Plantation Burial, ca. 1860. Like other African American customs, the community care of the dead contained an implied rebuke to the masters’ care of the living slaves. SOURCE: John Antrobus, “Negro Burial.” Oil painting. The Historic New Orleans Collection #1960.46.


Other Kinds of Resistance

White Southerners did everything they could to keep blacks from escaping.Running away and hiding in the swamps or woods for about a week and then returning was more common.


Harriet Tubman was 40 years old when this photograph (later hand-tinted) was taken. Already famous for her daring rescues, she gained further fame by serving as a scout, spy, and nurse during the Civil War.


Slave Revolts

A few slaves organized revolts. Gabriel Prosser and Denmark Vesey organized large-scale conspiracies to attack whites in Richmond and Charleston that failed. Nat Turner led the most famous slave revolt in Southampton County, Virginia in 1831. Turner used religious imagery to lead slaves as they killed 55 whites. After Turner’s revolt, white southerners continually were reminded by the threat of slave insurrection.


This drawing shows the moment, almost two months after the failure of his famous and bloody slave revolt, when Nat Turner was accidentally discovered in the woods near his home plantation. Turner’s cool murder of his owner and methodical organization of his revolt deeply frightened many white Southerners. SOURCE: Courtesy of the Library of Congress.


Free African Americans

By 1860, there were nearly 250,000 free African Americans, mainly working as tenants or farm laborers.

In cities, free African American communities flourished but had a precarious position as their members lacked basic civil rights.


One of the ways Charleston attempted to control its African American population was to require all slaves to wear badges showing their occupation. After 1848, free black people also had to wear badges, which were decorated, ironically, with a liberty cap.


Part Six:

The White Majority


Poor White People

Between 30 to 50 percent of southern whites were landless.

These poor whites lived a marginal existence as laborers and tenants.

They engaged in complex and sometimes clandestine relations with slaves.

Chart: Slaveholding and Class Structure in the South, 1830


FIGURE 10.3 Slaveholding and Class Structure in the South, 1830 The great majority of the southern white population were yeoman farmers. In 1830, slave owners made up only 36 percent of the southern white population; owners of more than fifty slaves constituted a tiny 2.5 percent. Yet they and the others who were middling planters dominated politics, retaining the support of yeomen who prized their freedom as white men above class-based politics.

SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of the Census.


Southern “Plain Folk”

Two-thirds of all southern whites lived in non-slaveholding families. Most yeomen were self-sufficient farmers. The strong sense of community was reinforced by close kin connections and bartering.

Some yeomen hoped to acquire slaves themselves, but many were content with self sufficient non-market agriculture. Yeomen supported slavery because they believed that it brought them higher status.


The goal of yeoman farm families was economic independence. Their mixed farming and grazing enterprises, supported by kinship and community ties, afforded them a self-sufficiency epitomized by Carl G. von Iwonski’s painting of this rough but comfortable log cabin in New Braunfels, Texas.


The Middling Ranks

A commercial middle class of merchants, bankers, factors, and lawyers:

arose to sell southern crops on the world market,

lived in cities that acted as shipping centers for agricultural goods.


Part Seven:

Planters


Small Slave Owners

Most slaveholders owned only a few slaves.

Bad crops or high prices that curtailed or increased income affected slave-holding status

Middle class professionals had an easier time climbing the ladder of success.


The Planter Elite

Most slaveholders inherited their wealth but sought to expand it. As slavery spread so did the slave-owning elite.The extraordinary concentration of wealth created an elite lifestyle.


Plantation Life

Most wealthy planters lived fairly isolated lives. Some planters cultivated an image of gracious living in the style of English aristocrats, but plantations were large enterprises that required much attention to a variety of tasks. Plantations aimed to be self-sufficient.


The Plantation Mistress

Following southern paternalism, in theory, each plantation was a family with the white master at its head. The plantation mistress ran her own household but did not challenge her husband’s authority. Many accounts reveal that white women treated slaves cruelly and gave harsh punishments.


Coercion and Violence

The slave system rested on coercion and violence. Slave women were vulnerable to sexual exploitation, though long-term relationships developed. Children of master-slave relationships seldom were publicly acknowledged and often remained in bondage.


© 2009 Pearson Education, Inc. 51

The gang system used in cotton cultivation necessitated overseers to keep the gang at work. Hence scenes like this where slaves work hard to pick and bale cotton while white overseers with whips stand lazily.

Seeing History “Gordon Under Medical Inspection”

SOURCE: Illustrations from photographs by McPherson and Oliver, in Harper’s Weekly, July 4, 1863, p. 429.


Part Eight:

The Defense of Slavery


Developing Proslavery Arguments

Slavery gave rise to various pro-slavery arguments including:

in the post-Revolution era, Southern whites found justifications in the Bible or classical Greece and Rome, the Constitution recognized slavery and that they were defending property rights.

The Missouri Compromise alarmed most southerners.


After Nat Turner

In the 1830’s, southern states began to barricade themselves from outside anti-slavery propaganda.

In 1836, southerners introduced a “gag rule” in Washington to prevent congressional consideration of abolitionist bills.

The growing anti-slavery moment meant no opportunity for expansion.


Changes in the South

The growing cost of slaves meant that the percentage of slaveholders was declining and class divisions widening.The slave system was disintegrating in southern cities.Economic changes adversely affected poor whites and yeomen.Hinton Rowan Helper denounced the institution.


Part Nine:

Conclusion


Population Patterns in the South, 1850

Map: Population Patterns in the South, 1850

In six southern states, slaves comprised over 40 percent of the total population.


MAP 10.4 Population Patterns in the South, 1850 In South Carolina and Mississippi, the enslaved African American population outnumbered the white population; in four other Lower South states, the percentage was above 40 percent. These ratios frightened many white Southerners. White people also feared the free black population, though only three states in the Upper South and Louisiana had free black populations of over 3 percent. Six states had free black populations that were so small (less than 1 percent) as to be statistically insignificant.


Chapter 10 The South and Slavery 1790 – 1850s Chapter 10 The South and Slavery 1790 – 1850s OUT...

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