Unit 4 – Chp 16 – The South and the Slavery Controversy
In the beginning of the nation’s history, slavery was profitable in only a small region of
this country. After Bacon’s Rebellion, slavery had replaced indentured servants as the main
form of worker in the South, but African slavery was slow to catch on, which is why rice, indigo,
and tobacco were the big cash crops of the day, the 3/5ths Compromise was agreed to by the
North, the Slave Compromise agreed to outlaw the importation of slaves in 20 years and Thomas
Jefferson considered getting rid of all slaves in the original version of the Declaration of
Independence.
It was not until 1793, with the invention of Eli Whitney’s Cotton Gin, that slavery
became so dominant in the South, or so needed to sift through all of the cotton that was now
being produced in the South. The plantations became bigger and more slaves were needed to big
the fluffy, white raw material that was such high demand in the Northern Textile Mills. In the
Deep South, Cotton became king of the cash crops. Cotton was sent to the North and/or England,
either way, northern middlemen, bankers / shippers, made money off the sale. Funny thing is
England outlawed slavery in its own empire in 1833, but kept buying Southern cotton, which
was produced by slaves. King Cotton, the nation’s biggest export, made the young nation very
wealthy, in regard to tax revenue, northern industry development, export sales, and side
businesses.
The South became a slavocracy, run and controlled by the 1700 families that owned more
than 100 slaves each on their huge plantations. Their became a huge discrepancy between the
rich and poor (poor whites, freed blacks, and then slaves on the bottom of the social system).
Large plantation owners were very rich, but resented the northern businesses that rich off of their
labor (or the labor of their slaves.) The rich southerners sent their children to private schools,
depleting the need for “public” schools in the South, and the southern plantation wives, ruled
their homes and the slaves within in them with an iron fist. Although how they treated their
slaves totally depended upon the individual, there was no real love there when a slave had to be
punished. Slaves were often whipped / lashed when deemed necessary and may even be sent out
to breakers, to break the will of tough slaves.
The Slave System in the South made some very rich, but it did have many negatives.
Producing only one major cash crop made the region dependent upon world prices and depleted
the soil of its nutrients. In addition, plantations had to routinely move farther West to get new
and big tracts of land. Also, the reliance upon slave labor brought a large capital investment by
owners who had to worry about the health of his/her slaves (remember, the importation of slaves
was banned by 1808) and feared them running away. However, the Cotton Kingdom had no
room for European immigration except for a few Irish immigrants that worked for low wages
and were often sent to do jobs deemed too dangerous for slaves.
Only ¼ of all whites in the South owned slaves, but those that did NOT own slaves were
often the most ardent supporters of this “peculiar institution” because it was a goal to shoot for.
The American Dream was alive and well in these southern Americans who believed they could
Unit 4 – Chp 16 – Notes 1
rise above where their ancestors came from. Also, these “hillbillies” or “crackers” were also led
by their racist ideas that they were better than someone else according to the class system. Those
southerners that lived in the Appalachian Mountains, like future President Andrew Johnson,
hated the rich slave owners and die hard Union supporters.
Free blacks, about 250,000 in the South and the North, had very few rights, like to work
where ever they wanted or to testify in court. Many in the South were mulattoes, half black and
half white, the product of slave masters impregnating slaves. These free blacks often owned
property, even slaves in some circumstances. Northern racist sentiments were often at least as
strong as their southern counterparts and a major reason why northerners did NOT want to see
the further spreading of slavery.
England outlawed the slave trade in 1807, a year before the US did, and it had its royal
navy, the West Africa Squadron, stop slave boats in their “Middle Passage,” and free the
slaves. This stopping /slowing of the international slave trade made slaves in the US more
valuable. By 1860, by almost the beginning of the Civil War, “Black Ivory,” was worth a
tremendous amount. Reproduction, especially from the Virginia area, became one of the few
ways to get new slaves. In the Deep South (South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi,
Alabama, and Louisiana) where plantations were large and slaves were in large demand, most
slave families actually stayed intact and they quickly outnumbered the whites (in what is now
called the black belt). Almost 75% of the population was black in some areas. However, the
slave auctions were brutal places and Harriet Beecher Stowe described it and the horrible nature
of slavery in her famous and very popular book from the 1850’s, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Slave revolts became more common in the South, but very often were NOT successful.
Leaders like Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey led unsuccessful slave revolts. The movie Amistad,
which is based upon the real story of a slave revolt aboard a slave ship was an ordeal that
involved the past president, John Quincy Adams, the Supreme Court, and 7 long years in the
1830’s and 1840’s. Eventually, the slaves were returned to West Africa.
The Peculiar Institution of slavery in the South was one of the last bastions of slavery in
the Western World. The American Colonization Society was founded in the early 1800’s to
return Africans to Africa, to places in Wet Africa like Liberia. Although this appealed to some
former slaves and abolitionists, it quickly went away as a feasible alternative as many blacks
were born in America and never knew the continent of Africa. Blacks, like Marcus Garvey, lost
out to more radical abolitionists. For example, a white northerner named William Lloyd
Garrison, write a paper titled the Liberator. Garrison helped found the American Anti-Slavery
Society, to bring together many famous abolitionists, including two famous former slaves
Sojourner Truth, a former slave from the New Paltz NY area, and Frederick Douglas, a gifted,
self-educated former slave.
Slave owners lived south of the Mason-Dixon line, the southern boundary of
Pennsylvania. Many became more upset with the North as differences between the two regions
became more and more apparent. By 1831, the Virginia legislature debated Southern ideas of
emancipation. Those ideas died with the Nat Turner rebellion that year and the Nullification
Unit 4 – Chp 16 – Notes 2
fight the following year. The South contended that all of these things were part of a great
Northern /Union conspiracy, led by abolitionists. 1831 also happened to be the year Garrison
launched the Liberator and the recent slave revolts of the 1790’s and early 1800’s left a lasting
impression on Southern slave holders. Many proslavery whites began to discuss the racist ideas
of their White Man’s Burden to help slaves, that the Bible supported their authority, that even
Aristotle spoke of the good of slavery, and that they helped bring slaves into their family. They
made their “servants” “happy” and it was a much better life than what immigrants had to deal
with in the northern slums, who toiled their lives away for horrible wages in filthy conditions.
Abolitionism and abolitionists themselves were very unpopular in the North since the
South owned northern banks hundreds of millions of dollars and northern industry was very
reliant upon the cheap raw materials of the South. However, by 1850 and maybe until 1860 in
some places, the people of the North began to see the “peculiar institution” as something that
was ripping the nation apart.
Unit 4 – Chp 16 – Notes 3