Life in the South (1830 - 1860)
Role Playing Rules:
1. Everyone Actively Participates
2. 20 Inch Voices
3. Think Empathetically: Put Yourself in
Your Characters’ Shoes
4. Listen Carefully to Others
5. Remember The Time: 1840s and 1850s
6. Remember that You are NOT You!
Southern Society
• Only 1/3 of families own any slaves
• Tenant Farmers (rural poor) - whites who rent or work
farms for landlords
• Yeomen - small farm owners who worked in fields
with slaves
• Planters - wealthy plantation owners; had more than
20 slaves - very rare
– Planters are political and economic leaders of the south
• Most Southern blacks are slaves, but 250,000 are free
• Free blacks - face discrimination - they can’t vote, live
in certain places, or own guns
• Some free blacks own slaves
impact.ifas.ufl.edu/ TV/multimedia.html
Cotton - the new Cash
Crop of the south
• South is largely agricultural (farming)
• Tobacco and rice prices drop
• Many in south are looking for a new way to
make money
• Eli Whitney’s cotton gin makes cotton
profitable
• Major problem now is that they cannot pick
cotton fast enough
In Character: What is the first thing you
think of when you see this image…
www.loc/gov/rr/print/list/082_slave.html.webloc
Cotton Boom
• Cotton Belt - South Carolina to east Texas - warm
and moist
• Cotton is easy to grow, doesn’t spoil, and easy to
transport
• Scientific Agriculture - Cotton drains fields of
nutrients, so farmers rotate fields, giving fields a
year to be restored
• More workers (slaves) are needed
• South almost entirely focus on cotton production
(short sighted)
In Character: What is the first
thing you think of when you hear
the word…
COTTON
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
By noting the regions in
which “cotton was king,”
what are two climate
conditions are required for
the growth of cotton?
homepage.univie.ac.at/.../ a_tour_of_topics.htm
Describe
the
clothing
of the
people in
the
image.
Why
might
this be?
http://beatl.barnard.columbia.edu/amciv/Cotton.jpg
What issues do
you see with the
housing used by
these people?
www.loc/gov/rr/print/list/082_slave.html.webloc
www.loc/gov/rr/print/list/082_slave.html.webloc
How can we tell this is the farm of a planter?
Life on a Plantation
• Plantation Wives - served as the business
leaders of the household (men often were
away on business)
• Specialized Jobs - domestic help (in home),
field workers, blacksmiths, carpenters,
shoemakers, etc.
• Overseer - plantation manager; in charge of
field production; in charge of slave
discipline
In Character: What is the first
thing you think of when you hear
the word…
PLANTATION
In Character: What is the first
thing you think of when you hear
the word…
OVERSEER
Life Under Slavery
• Treatment of slaves varied from farm to farm
• Slaves on small farms did many tasks; those on
large plantations specialized
• Slaves usually worked from dawn to dusk, and ate
meals in the fields
• Slaves served as butlers, maids, or cooks in
plantation homes
• Skilled slaves (blacksmiths and carpenters) were
sometimes able to hire themselves out to other
farms for money
In Character: What is the first
thing you think of when you hear
the word…
SLAVERY
timmer.org/HISTORY_17A/Links/images/violence.jpg.webloc
Slave Life
•
•
•
•
Slaves were treated as property, not people
Bought and sold for profit ($200 to $5000)
Homes were dirt floored shacks
Slaves created adopted families, and feared being sold
away from the group
• Marriages were not legal, could be broken up by sale
• Told folktales (stories with a moral) instead of going to
school
• Created religious ceremonies and songs to create hope
and pass time
In Character: What is the first
thing you think of when you hear
the phrase…
LIFE OF A SLAVE
How do the
businesses in
this image
make money?
What does
this image tell
us about how
slaves were
viewed?
www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/082_slave.html.webloc
www.loc.gov/rr/print/list/082_slave.html.webloc
What is inhumane about slave auctions?
The image about to be
shown is disturbing,
but it shows the amount
of physical scarring
that can result for slave
abuse by overseers.
You may look away if
you wish.
timmer.org/HISTORY_17A/Li#45AA5
Challenging Slavery
• Slow Downs - slaves worked slowly to protest
• Escape - slaves tried to escape to Mexico or
Canada
• Revolt - rare but feared by owners
• Nat Turner’s Rebellion (1831)
– Turner and fellow slaves believe God told then
to rebel during a solar eclipse
– Kill total of 60 whites in Virginia, inc. Turner’s
owner and family
– 100 Slaves killed in the rebellion, Turner
hanged
– Most violent slave revolt in US history
In Character: What is the first
thing you think of when you hear
the name…
NAT TURNER
http://www.afrigeneas.com/library/runaway_ads/slave-ad-lg.gif
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
http://www.hudsonrivervalley.net/images/add02.gif
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
The previous reward
was for $200. This
reward is for $400.
Why would Harry be
worth paying such a
high reward for?
($400 in 1800 is worth
$4572.84 in 2006
according to the
Inflation Calculator)
In Character: What is the first thing
you think of when you first see this image…
City Life in South
• Free blacks - denied rights of whites and
faced daily discrimination
• No state-wide public schools
• Parents who could afford it sent kids to
private schools or hired tutors
• Literacy - ability to read; literacy rate in
South lower than the North because of lack
of schools
In Character: What is the first
thing you think of when you hear
the phrase…
CITY LIFE IN THE SOUTH
African-American Culture in the South
• African slave trade banned in 1808
• By 1860, almost all slaves been in U.S.
• Spirituals - songs sung with religious messages
about escape or freedom - root of Jazz, blues,
gospel music
• Slave Codes - rules that were meant to control
slaves. Examples:
– No gathering in large groups
– Had to have a pass to be in public
– Illegal to teach slaves to read/write
In Character: What is the first
thing you think of when you hear
the phrase…
AFRICAN-AMERICAN
CULTURE IN THE SOUTH