Slavery & Southern
Antebellum Society
Yeoman —A funny word


Yeoman (plural Yeomen)
 Not Yoeman, nor Yo-Man, nor Yowman
Definition—An independent farmer.
 What makes one independent?
 Another definition “A self-working farmer”
 So… did yeomen own slaves?
 Some did…but would only be 1-2 & they worked
alongside them
 What percentage of the South’s population were
Yeomen?
 Approximately 80%
Yeoman Farmer
Andrew Jackson’s Houses:
Social Mobility Did Exist in the South
Harmony actually existed between
Slaveowners & Non-Slaveowners
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Non-slave owners aspired to become
slaveowners
If slavery exists, there’s always somebody
lower than you
Kin – most non-slaveowners had at least 1
relative that did own slaves
Political power is held by the common man –
all yeoman farmers could vote &
slaveowners were taxed for their property
(slaves)
Economic transactions occurred between
non-slave and slave owners…renting of
cotton gins for example
Good Society
Argument



By 1830s slavery seen
as a positive good –
benefits rising for N & S
One of long-term
effects of economic
profitability of slavery
via Whitney’s cotton gin
Replaced Jeffersonian
view that slavery was a
necessary evil with no
real solution
COTTON IS KING!



50% of all exports after 1840
S produces 50% of world’s cotton supply
75% of BR cotton comes from S – BR is
world’s leading industrial power


Before Ind. Rev., most Southern
planters made little profit from
slave labor
BUT, invention of cotton gin by
ELI WHITNEY made slave labor
profitable throughout the South
 Positive Effect:


Production increased ; cotton is
biggest export
Negative Effects:


More Americans began to think
of slavery as a “positive good” less criticism of slavery
Slave labor quintupled between
this invention & the Civil War
Where did slaves work?


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
Cotton
Tobacco
Sugar/rice/hemp
Servants
Trades/industry
55 percent
10 percent
10 percent
15 percent
10 percent
Slave Crops
Cotton—4.5 million bales (1860)
Slave Distribution
RATIO OF SLAVEHOLDERS TO
FAMILIES, (1860)
STATE:
SLAVEHOLDERS
MISSISSIPPI
30943
SOUTH CAROLINA
26701
GEORGIA
41084
ALABAMA
33730
FLORIDA
5152
LOUISIANA
22033
TEXAS
21878
NORTH CAROLINA
34658
VIRGINIA
52128
TENNESSEE
36844
ARKANSAS
11481
Total
316632
TOTAL FAMILIES
63015
58642
109919
96603
15090
74725
76781
125090
201523
149335
57244
1027967
PCT
49
46
37
35
34
29
28
28
26
25
20
31
Works out to 1 in 3 families actually owned slaves – 31% of families in the South
PLANTER
ARISTOCRACY


Government by the
few in the South
Wealth & power
concentrated in the
hands of an elite
upper class –
cottonocracy
 1,733 families
own 100+ slaves
SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF THE
ANTEBELLUM SOUTH:



Planter Aristocracy on top (Whigs)
“Lesser Masters” (less than 10 slaves- most own 1 or 2)
Yeoman Farmers (subsistence farmers - usually
Democrats)


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
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Majority of white population by 1860
“crackers, hillbillies, clayeaters”
Aspire to slaveowning
Non-slaveholding whites (approximately 1/4 of all
southern whites)
“Poor white trash”- mountain whites (will support
Union during war)
Slaves
FREE BLACKS


South – 250,000, 1860
Manumission:

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Upper – after Rev. War
Deep – mulattos;
manumitted in willls
Some purchased freedom
Black slaveowners
Status: none – 3rd race,
must carry papers
Some black
slaveowners….


North
Victims of prejudice
& segregation


Schools, voting,
housing, conflicts
with Irish
Anti-black feeling
actually worse
many times in N


Little contact with
blacks
Friends of race, but
don’t like individuals
Slave
Codes



Slave laws are state laws & most define them as property – can be
bought, sold, mortgaged, etc.
Can’t testify, can’t own property, can’t have a family, etc.
Note though that slaves WERE seen as people & not property in
the criminal system…so slave could be tried for crimes and it was
also illegal to commit crimes against slaves – murder for ex.
Economic Weaknesses of Plantation
System:

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Land intensive; leads to soil depletion
Cotton production is monopolistic
Involves huge capital investments in land and
labor
Discourages economic diversification


Reliance on cotton; no manufacturing
Discourages immigration

Slave labor, high cost of land, Europeans don’t know
cotton farming
PLANTATION ORGANIZATION
Gang System was typical:


Owner—Planter (owns 20+ slaves)
Overseer—Day-to-day authority figure


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Occasionally would be a trusted slave (Jeffferson
Davis)
Driver—Slave Foreman
Field Hand—Men and women
Slave
Trade


Apprx. 900,000 sold in U.S. – sold “down river” – split many families
Apprx. 20% of wealth from slavery comes from the internal slave trade
Slave Prices
Price of slaves quintuples
from 1800-1860
$35,000 to $40,000 in
today’s prices
Plantation Slavery
Slave Quarters
Slave
Weddings
Marriages not officially recognized
Plantation Slave Life

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Work from “kin to kin’t” (dawn to dusk)
Kept in ignorance (9/10 illiterate)
Whippings ……but why not beaten bloody on a
regular basis?
Religion a big part of slave life – Sunday off
Forms of resistance:

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Work slowdowns
Theft
Sabotage (arson, crop destruction, tool breaking)
Runaways & rebellions


Gabriel Prosser Conspiracy 1800 – “revolt” that never
actually happened ….hanged anyway
Denmark Vessey Conspiracy 1822 – SC, over 30 hanged
Nat Turner’s Rebellion
Virginia, 1831

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Preacher / slave
40 slaves killed over 60 whites (in bed at night)
Turner eventually caught, hanged, skinned
Sets off mob & revenge lynchings of blacks
Effect: solidified the greatest fears in the South and caused the end of
abolitionism in the South
Fugitive Slaves



Running away was most
common way of resisting
slavery
Most ran away for a short
time due to feeling they
had received an unjust
punishment or to look for
a family member
Whipped 10 times for
each day they were gone
Slave “Diseases”

Drapetomia


“Disease” that caused them to
run away & the cure is to whip
it out of them
Dysaethesia
Aethiopica

Dr. Samuel Cartwright

Leading internationally
recognized scientist from
MS that studied slaves

Caused slaves to be “rascals”
To be insubordinate & commit
minor sabotage
Cure was whipping or isolation
EARLY
ABOLITIONISM

Quakers were first

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as early as Revolutionary War
1816 – American Colonization Society
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British
Colonization
Society
symbol
Liberia, 1822 (capital – Monrovia)
15,000 transported
Most didn’t want to go – by 1860, most slaves
were American born
Lincoln favored this early on
1830s influences: BR emancipation in 1833 &
2nd Great Awakening
Theodore Weld, Grimke Sisters
Anti-Slavery Alphabet
QUAKERS are the early leaders in the abolitionist movement.
RADICAL ABOLITIONISM

William Lloyd Garrison
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American Anti-Slavery Society, 1833
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Sees Constitution as an “agreement with hell”
The Liberator, 1831
Comes out same year as Turner’s rebellion – Garrison
seen as a terrorist
Garrison
Wendell Phillips
Elijah Lovejoy
William Lloyd Garrison
(1801-1879)
 Slavery undermined
republican values.
 Slavery was a moral, not
an economic issue.
 Immediate emancipation
with NO compensation to
owners.
 Full and complete equal rights
for blacks.
R2-4

Despised in
S, but also
seen as too
radical in N

The “Angry
Abolitionist”
Other White Abolitionists
Elijah Lovejoy
Wendell Phillips
James Birney
 Liberty Party.
 Ran for President,
1840 & 1844.
Theodore Weld
Northern Reaction to Abolitionists

Most treat abolitionists as
radicals

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The North has a significant
economic interest in Dixie!
Violence:

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Lewis Tappan’s house ransacked
in 1834
Broadcloth Mob drags Garrison
through Boston streets in 1835
Rev. Elijah Lovejoy killed in IL in
1837
Black Abolitionists
David Walker
(1785-1830)
1829 
Appeal to the Coloured
Citizens of the World
Fight for freedom rather than
wait to be set free by whites;
violence is only way to freedom
Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)
1845  The Narrative of the Life
Of Frederick Douglass
1847  “The North Star”
Believes in power of education
Differs from Garrison in that he does NOT
want to do away with Constitution
Sojourner Truth (1787-1883)
or Isabella Baumfree
Ain’t I a woman?
1850  The Narrative of Sojourner Truth
R2-10
Harriet Tubman
(1820-1913)
 Helped over 300 slaves
to freedom.
 Known as the “Black
Moses”
 $40,000 bounty on her
head.
 Served as a Union spy
during the Civil War.
“Moses”
Leading Escaping Slaves Along
the Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad
Events securing Southern support of
slavery:

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Defeat of VA’s emancipation proposals (1831)
Nat Turner’s Rebellion (1831)
Nullification Crisis (1832)
Proslavery efforts to defend the “peculiar institution”

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Christianity arguments
Defense of master-slave relationship as father-child relationship
Myth of happy slave vs. the oppressed N industrial worker
Government crackdown on free speech (Jackson)

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1835 Postmasters restrict transmission of abolitionist literature
through the mails – in response to rioting in SC where mob
burned abolitionist propaganda
1836 Gag Rule in House – all anti-slavery appeals tabled
SLAVE CONCENTRATION BY 1860
What is the Mason-Dixon Line?