Slavery and Society, 1800-1860
Slavery and Society, 1800-1860
• King Cotton & the
Old South
▫ Economics
▫ Identity
▫ Culture
• Slave Life
▫ Population
▫ House and Field
• Community
• Resistance
King Cotton and the Agrarian South
• The Plantation/Cash Crop…Eli Whitney/Cotton
Gin
• The Peculiar Institution
• Codes
• Dehumanizing
• Social Structure
King Cotton and the Old South
• Cotton and the South
▫ Climate, geography
▫ Profitable
▫ England/industry
• Cotton gin
• Outlawed int’l trade in
1808
King Cotton and the Old South
• Economics
▫ 60% of U.S. exports
▫ Basis of southern
economy
• Linked N & S
• Linked U.S. & Britain
Cotton, slavery, race identity
• Southern Identity
▫ Rural
▫ White privilege
▫ “Honor”
• Fear of uprisings
• “Dependence”
Cotton Culture
• “…people live in cotton
houses and ride in cotton
carriages. They buy
cotton, sell cotton, think
cotton, eat cotton, drink
cotton, and dream cotton.
They marry cotton wives
and unto them are born
cotton children…”
• British visitor Hiram
Fuller’s views of Mobile,
AL in 1858
Slavery and Expansion
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Post 1812 & Indian Removal
Westward expansion
Missouri Compromise
Texas “Independence”
• Louisiana, ARK, OK, TX
• Profits used to buy more
land, more land=more
slaves, more crops=more
profit=more land=more
slaves=more crops
American Slavery
• 19/55 signers of the Constitution owned slaves
• Majority of southern Congressmen owned slaves
• 4/6 Presidents up to and including Jackson
owned slaves
• $25 million in U.S. revenue vs. $1 billion in slave
“property”
• Shipping & ship building, insurance, banks,
factories in the North
Population
• 1790: 700,000
• 1850: 4 million
• 1850: 50% grew cotton
• 25% of whites had slaves
• 50% of owners had
less than 5 slaves
• 5% of planters owned
40% of all slaves in south
Free Blacks
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Non-slaves in the South
6% of total Black population
3% of total population
Laws limited their rights and citizenship, papers,
no access to courts
• Most descended from blacks freed in Upper
South
• Mainly manual labor
• Racial hierarchies based on skin color
Slave Life
• Mortality rates were
3 times higher
• Life expectancy
▫ Blacks 20’s
▫ Whites 40’s
• 25% sick
Slave Codes
• State laws to limit movement of slaves and
define them as property
• Cannot own a gun
• Marriages not legally recognized
• No alcohol
• Passes to leave plantation
• Illegal to teach slaves to read or write
• Legalized homicide as “punishment”
“House slaves”
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15%-20%
Constant contact
Raise children
Gendered violence
Reading
News
“Field Slaves”
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75% of slaves
18 hours
“Gangs”
Overseer
Music and group
identity
“Virginian Luxuries,” nd. Anonymous
African American Community
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Family
Auctions
Fictive kin
Tribal culture
Music, dance,
spirituality
Christianity
• 2nd Great
Awakening
• Lay preachers
• Justice, salvation
• “Call and Response”
• Gospel
• African American
Methodist Church,
1816
Resistance
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Work slow
“Sick”
Break tools
“Theft”
Run away
Rebellion
Gabriel Prosser
Resistance
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Run away slaves
Over 1,000
Upper south
Canada
West
Slave Rebellions
• Gabriel Prosser 1800
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Literate
Richmond, VA
1000 slaves
“Death or liberty”
• Denmark Vescey, 1822
▫ Telemanque, born in
Africa or W. Indies
▫ Free, literate, preacher
▫ Charleston
▫ Missouri Compromise
▫ 100 men
Rebellions
• Nat Turner, 1831
▫ Virginia
▫ Literate, preacher
▫ Killed 70
Harriet Tubman
• Underground Railroad
• Homes, barns, woods,
trails north
• 19 missions
• 300 people
Family on Underground Railroad
Situation in 1850s
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Radical Abolitionism
Radical/Absolute/Militant
William Lloyd Garrison The Liberator
David Walker Appeal To Colored Citizens of the
World 1829
• Sojourner Truth, Martin Delaney, Frederick
Douglas
• The South Reacts
• Gag Resolution 1836
Concluding Thoughts
• Despite dependence on cotton and slavery,
Southern economy became more diverse
• Slavery in Upper South declined
• Immigration provided cheap & flexible labor
• Changes to economy made slave owners more
worried
• More rebellions, abolitionists, Westward
expansion, made slave codes more harsh
• TEXAS…..why?