The Old South
Peoples, Apologists, and Critics,
1800-1860
The South as American
Counterpoint
• Shrouded in Myth: “Gone with the Wind”
versus “Simon Legree”
• Distinctive Features: heat, humidity, staple
crop agriculture, native born populations,
race
• Colonial Economics
Attempts at Manufacturing
• Daniel Pratt—Prattville, Alabama
• Joseph Reid Anderson—Tredegar
Ironworks
• William Weaver and Daniel C. E. Brady—
Buffalo Forge
Daniel Pratt
Tredegar Works
Slaves at Buffalo Forge
White “Society” in the Old South
• Only a few were planters
• Only a few were managerial or
professionals—mostly Ministers and
Lawyers
• Large Yeoman class
• Poor whites
Slaveholders in 1850
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68,820 have only 1 slave
105,683 have 2 to 4 slaves
80,765 have 5 to 9
54,595 have 10 to 19
29,733 have 20 to 49
6,196 have 50 to 99
1,479 have 100 to 199
187 have 200-299
56 have 300-499
11 have 500 more
347,575 slaveholders in 1850
White Women and the “Myth of
the Sisterhood”
• Plantation mistresses complained about the
hard work of slavery
• Many were frustrated by the “double
standard”
• Few openly or covertly criticized slavery
• Why?—Women had a stake in the system
and were socialized into the racial fears of
the white men.
Honor in the South
• Face to face honor
• Poorer men had stake in herrenvolk
democracy
• “Masters of Small Worlds”
• “Holy Honor”
African American Society
• Most slaves worked
on large plantations
• Plantation Culture—
from dark to dawn
• Free blacks—a few of
whom owned slaves
• Slave women were 2x
slaves
• Celia’s story—only
Robert Newsome was
protected by law
against rape—he could
sue another man for
trespassing on his
property
Slave Rebellions
• Gabriel’s rebellion in 1800
• St. John the Baptist Parish Rebellion in
1811
• Denmark Vesey Rebellion in 1822
• Nat Turner in 1831 "I should arise and
prepare myself, and slay my enemies with
their own weapons."
Advent of Immediatism
• Colonization and expatriation from 1816 to
1831
• William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator
• American Anti-Slavery Society
• Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth—
underground railroad and other direct action
Southern Proslavery
• Thornton W. Stringfellow—Biblical
Defenses of slavery
• George Fitzhugh—Cannibals All, or Slaves
without Masters
• Henry Hughes—Treatise on Sociology
So What—they ain’t nuthin’ but
inbred bubbas
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Honor based society
Fear of slave rebellion
Concept of “whitening”
Accustomed to proslavery national
government—don’t like the gag rule
controversy or the abolitionist mail
campaign in 1835
• Belief that slavery had to expand or die
Alexander Stephens’
“Cornerstone Speech”
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea;
its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great
truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery -subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal
condition. [Applause.] This, our new government, is the first, in
the history of the world, based upon this great physical,
philosophical, and moral truth.