Chapter 13: The Old South

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 cotton—and the slave labor used to produce them.”

The Highlights:  

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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 ©2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights reserved.

The Social Structure of the Cotton Kingdom 

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The Boom Country Economy – Cotton pushes westward, 1810s-1850s – Southern prosperity – Single-crop agriculture exhausted the soil

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The Upper South’s 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 lived in urban areas

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Distribution of Slavery – Centered in the Deep South – Most slaves worked in agriculture

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Slavery as a Labor System – A profitable institution for slaveowners – Fed the aristocratic values of planters

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Class Structure of the White South 

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The Slaveowners – 25% of 8 million whites owned slaves (1860) – Typical plantation: 25-50 slaves

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Tidewater and Frontier – Tidewater: Eastern Seaboard, where slavery was more established – Frontier: the interior, where slavery was newer

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The Master at Home – Paternalism: belief in caring for slaves as one’s children – Everyone on plantation was the master’s dependent

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The Plantation Mistress – Domestic duties – Some women identified with slaves – The social problem of miscegenation

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Yeoman Farmers – Half of southern white population – 80% were landowners – Limited economic opportunity – Surprising absence of class conflict with planters

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Poor whites – 5% of white population – Most illiterate and malnourished – Hated African Americans more than planters

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The Peculiar Institution 

Work and Discipline – Hierarchy of slave workers: house servants, drivers, artisans, field hands – Long work days – 15 hours per day – Usually had Sundays off

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Slave Maintenance – Planters provided 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’”(410).

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

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Slave Culture 

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

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Slave Songs and Stories – Work songs in the field and in the quarter – Folktales continued African traditions

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Steal Away to Jesus – Slaves formed their own form of Christianity – Slave preachers – Prevalence of spirituals

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The Slave Community – Defined hierarchy in slave quarters – Importance of skin color

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Free Black Southerners – 260,000 of 4 million black Southerners were free – 85% lived in the Upper South – Tried to develop close connections with influential whites

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Southern Society and the Defense of Slavery 

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The Virginia Debate of 1832 – William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator – Nat Turner’s insurrection – Legislature argued bitterly over ending slavery – Voted 73-58 to refuse consideration of legislation banning slavery

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The Proslavery Argument

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– Religious justification: slaves were the descendants of Canaan – Social and racial justification: Africans were inferior – James Henry Hammond—famous proslavery writer 

Closing Ranks – Jacksonian Democrats defended slavery

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Sections and the Nation – North and South still unified in spite of social and economic differences

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