Slavery and the
Old (Antebellum) South:
The Cotton Kingdom
Building the Cotton Kingdom
White Gold (King Cotton)

Textile manufacturing around the world
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¾ of world supply came from the southern
United States
Over ½ of total exports from U.S. by 1850
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$ used to purchase imported manufactured goods
Value of Cotton Exports
As % of All US Exports
Southern Economy
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Limited industry
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Southern banks loaning $ for slaves and land
Less than 10% of manufactured goods
Discouraged immigration
Inhibited technological advances
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Short rail lines (point A to point B)
Cotton Gin, Flat bottom Rear Paddle
Steamboats
The Expansion of Slavery in a
Global Economy
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In 1860 the American South, if independent,
would have been one of the wealthiest
countries in the world based on the revenue
of the cotton trade.
Cotton cultivation and its expansion
depended on technological development,
land, labor, demand, and a global system of
trade.
This is the triangle slave trade.slaves were legally
trafficked between Africa and the United States
(until 1808) and Latin America.
Slavery in Latin America
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Europeans depended on African slavery in
their New World colonies.
African slaves were imported to replace the
indigenous populations that were eradicated
by disease.
Sugar production was the cash crop for the
Latin American holdings of the European
powers.
White and Black Migrations in the
South
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Between 1830 and 1860, southerners
began to migrate in a southwest direction
to fill up the fertile land and increase
cotton production for the mills of
England.
The center of cotton production gradually
shifted from South Carolina to
Mississippi.
“Sold Down the River” (Coffle)
An estimated 1 million slaves were
transported westward by this forced
Southern Society (1850)
6,000,000
“Slavocracy”
[plantation owners]
The “Plain Folk”
[white yeoman farmers]
Black Freemen
250,000
Black Slaves
3,200,000
Total US Population --> 23,000,000
[9,250,000 in the South = <40%]
Louisiana Plantation Homes
Paternalism and Honor in the Planter
Class
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Most Southern males adhered to a longstanding tradition of medieval chivalry and
aversion to industrialization.
The Southern planters developed a
paternalistic attitude towards his slaves; a
supposedly kindly father-and-child
relationship.
An intensely masculine code of honor placed
the virtue of women on a pedestal.
The smallest insult could lead to pistol duels.
John C. Calhoun’s
Plantation Home: Fort Hill, SC
Yeoman Farmers

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Most slaveholders (70 percent) belonged
to the mid-level yeoman farmer class.
A Yeoman farmer might have owned as
many as ten slaves, but usually worked
alongside them.
75 percent of all southerners held no
slaves at all.
Plain Folk in the South

3 of 4 white families owned no slaves
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Not involved in market economy

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Family labor
Hired workers
Home production
Little access to public education

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Illiterate
Mean as hell?
Hillbillies?
Why the Plain Folk didn’t despise
the Planters

Economic and Personal Freedoms
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Planter class had power
Racism
Political culture
Loyalty
Power (slave patrols)
Rented slaves from plantations

Mountain Whites
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Hated Planters
Hated Blacks
Hated Everybody
Hinton R. Helper’s
Impending Crisis of
the South (1859)
Andrew Johnson
Virginia Slave Cabin
and Master’s Home
Kinglsey Plantation
Paternalism (or Feudalism revisited)

Agrarian society (Father is the head)

Personal responsibility for physical and moral
well-being of their dependents
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Master has right to obedience and labor
Slave has right to protection, guidance,
subsistence, care and attention
Code of personal honor (dueling)
Loves his wife because she is weak
The Southern “Belle”
“Lady on a Pedestal”
Mary Boykin Chesnut

Diary from Dixie
Miscegenation?
Justifying Slavery:
Proslavery Arguments
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Biblical Justification: ancient curse upon Ham, a child of
Noah and other references
Historical Justification: all great civilizations participated
in slavery
Legal Justification: the U.S. Constitution protected slavery
w/o the word “slavery”
Racist Justification: multiple theories regarding inferiority
of the black race
Sociological Justification: the black race as societal
“children” that needed paternalistic guidance
South Carolina’s Truth

John C. Calhoun
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All men created equal was “the most false &
dangerous of all political errors”
Freedom is a privilege
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A reward to be earned and not for all
Minister John B. Alger
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“divine arrangement of the world”
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Submission of inferior to superior
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Black to white
Female to male
Lower classes to upper classes
Other Proslavery Apologists
for the “Peculiar Institution”
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Thomas R. Dew
The Virtues of
Slavery
George Fitzhugh
Sociology for the South
Cannibals ALL! Or Slaves
w/o Masters
Slaves Picking Cotton
on a Mississippi Plantation
Daily Toil
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Slaves were expected to work an average of
14 hours per day during warm weather and
10 hours in the winter.
Work gangs of 20 to 25 slaves labored
under the whip of a “slave driver” or
Overseer (usually white trash)
The task system allowed slaves to finish a
designated task each day at their own pace.
A normal slave was expected to pick 130 to
150 pounds of cotton a day.
Slaves Using A Cotton Gin
Slave Personality Stereotypes
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Nat Turner-Rebellious, Surly, Hostile,
Murderous
Masters pictured their slaves as happy-go
lucky, docile, simple, childlike, stereotyped
as
 SAMBO
Slave Personality
“SAMBO” pattern of behavior used as a
charade in front of whites [the innocent,
laughing black man caricature – bulging eyes,
thick lips, big smile, etc.].
PC Editions -2000-03
Joel Chandler Harris
The Disney Version:
“Song of the South”
More Stereotypes
Indigo Cultivation by Slaves in S.C.
Cotton Picking
House Servants
Hollywood and Reality
Hillary’s 2005 Gaffe
Slave Family Life
Slave Law and the Family
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The legal status of slaves in the South was
never fully resolved, leading to a wide
range of laws governing the treatment of
African Americans. Slave Codes.
Marriages between slaves were often
arranged for optimal genetic
reproduction.
Slave families were often separated.
The Enduring Family
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Family relationships were central to the
lives of most slaves.
Slaves could draw love, protection,
support, knowledge, and cultural identity
from these extended families.
Slaves often performed extra work to
provide extra food and clothing for their
families.
A photograph of a family of
slaves posing in front of their
cabin.
http://www.kale.new.schooled.de/gigot/feather/politic/billing_9/slavery/implant.him
Forms of Black Protest
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Daily acts of resistance might include
breaking of tools, burning houses or
crops, stealing food, self mutilation or
simple work slowdowns.
Females might fake sickness or menstrual
cramps.
The ultimate forms were murder or
running away.
The Ledger of John White

Matilda Selby, 9, $400.00 sold to Mr. Covington, St.
Louis, $425.00

Brooks Selby, 19, $750.00 Left at Home – Crazy

Fred McAfee, 22, $800.00 Sold to Pepidal,
Donaldsonville, $1200.00

Howard Barnett, 25, $750.00 Ranaway. Sold out of jail,
$540.00
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Harriett Barnett, 17, $550.00 Sold to Davenport and
Jones, Lafourche, $900.00
Black Christianity
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Christian worship was an integral part of
life in the slave quarters.
Black Christianity often included aspects
of Islamic and African religions.
Black religious gatherings were usually
forbidden unless a white overseer was
present.
For the white planters, religion became a
type of social control.
Slave Conspiracies
in the Antebellum South
Gabriel Prosser
1800
1822
Slave Rebellions in the Antebellum
South:
Nat Turner, 1831
Slave tags issued in
Charleston, South Carolina,
1817-63
http://www.kale.new.schooled.de/gigot/feather/politic/billing_9/slavery/implant.him
These were used to
keep track of the
slaves they were.
also branded so if
a runaway was
found the person
who found them
they would know
where to return
the slave. to and
collect the reward
for finding the
slave.
These are shackles used to chain
slaves down so they couldn’t easily run away
http://www.kale.new.schooled.de/gigot/feather/politic/billing_9/slavery/implant.him
Most Common From of Punishment
Slave Narratives
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Frederick Douglass
Solomon Northrup
Harriett Jacobs (Linda Brent)
Henry “Box” Brown
100’s more
WPA Freedmen Interviews
Northern and Foreign Observations
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Frederick Law Olmsted’s
The Cotton Kingdom
Alexis de Tocqueville’s
Democracy in America
Frances Kemball’s
Life on a Georgia Plantation