Lecture Nine: Southern Slavery in the 19th Century
I. King Cotton and Southern Expansion
A. The Cotton Gin and Southern Expansion to the Old SW
1. Invention in 1793 of the Cotton Gin
–inventor Eli Whitney, a northerner, and SC planter Catherine Greene widow of
Revolutionary War General Nathaniel Greene
–Whitney was hired to tutor her children
–gin–hand cranked cylinder with teeth that tore the lint away from cotton seeds.
–with Greene’s suggestion the teeth were made of wire
2. The gin could clean more than 50# per day vs. a day per pound by hand
3. Made raising cotton profitable
4. 1811 Georgia/SC were producing 60mil # per year.
5. Expanded into other areas of the south because cotton depleted the soil
6. Moved into AL and Miss. after War 1812
–AA pioneers cleared the land, drained swamps, broke ground, built houses and
planted crops.
7. Half of all white SC’s born after 1800 moved west
–“Alabama Fever” 1816-1820
–also in 1832-38 –over Miss. River into Louisiana and deep into Texas
B. Changing Attitudes Toward Slavery
1. Northern States after Revolution abolished slavery
2. 1776-86–all states except GA and SC banned or taxed slave trade
3. Cotton gin and profits to be made by cotton required slave labor
–only slave labor that could work brutal pace necessary for cotton
production
–demand for cotton rose so did the demand and justification for African
slave labor
4. Slave smuggling became so rampant by 1804 they reopened the trade
–40,000 /year were imported into Charleston
–After 1808 the slave force increase was dependent on natural increase and the
importance of the internal slave trade
C. The Internal Slave Trade
1. every decade after 1820 150,000 slaves were uprooted by slave trading or
planter migration
–by 1860– One million slaves were uprooted by internal slave trade and forced
migration — more than were brought to US during the period of legal international slave trade.
2. Slave pens in Richmond/Charleston
–taken by boat or train south
–“coffles” –slaves on foot chained together a common site on southern roads
–taken to Natchez, New Orleans or Mobile and sold at auction
3. slave traders were often well respected members of the community
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4. sheer scale of slave trade made it impossible that slave owners were reluctant to
part with their slaves.
–sold slaves, separated families for profit
–size of the internal trade made a mockery of the notion of the benevolence of the
slave system.
D. The Economics of Slavery
1. Industrial revolution contributed to technological improvements of spinning
and weaving
–factories begun in England
2. profitability of Southern farmers
–1830–720.000 bales vs. 1850 2.85 mil and by 1860 –5mil bales
–60% of American exports in 1860–$200 mil a year
-southern slavery financed northern industrial development
E. Cotton Culture
1. Different kind of society
–small cities of 2500 or less
–large cities were in North or West–New Orleans was the fifth largest in
the country with 169.000
–compared with Baltimore 212, 418 and Boston 177, 840
–VA or MS had less than 10% of their population in large cities.
2. Agrarian ideal encouraged an anti-urban/ anti-commercial sentiments of white
southerners
3. South lagged behind in industrial, railroads and canal production
–15% of nations factories were in the south
–South tied up on cotton, land, slaves
–not interested in introducing wage labor or rail/canals etc.
–cotton created regional culture
II. To Be a Slave
A. The Maturing of the American Slave System
1. 1790--700,00 to 4mil. by 1860 were slaves
2. 1855– 55% were engaged in cotton growing
–15% were domestics and 10% worked in mining, lumbering, and
construction.
3. Cotton forced the larger concentration of slaves on large plantation–a shift from
the smaller farms in earlier generations.
–more than half of all slave owners owned 5 ro fewer slaves
—75% now lived in groups of ten or more.
–the size of farm had a major impact on a slave’s life–on larger plantations
fostered growth of AA communities
–BUT– Southwest expansion undermined the stability of AA communities
–eg. of being “sold down the river”
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B The Challenge to Survive
1. Healthy enough to work
2. Healthy enough to reproduce
–mortality rates of slave children under five were twice their white
counterparts
–black women were undernourished and worked to hard, to frequently
pregnant–giving birth within 18mos. intervals
3. Life expectancy was a big issue for white and black
–40-43 for whites and 30-33 for blacks
4. 20% of slaves were sick at any one time
–ignorance of medical knowledge
-- myth of malingering
C. From Cradle to Grave
1. Lifetime slavery was considered by Southerners as more humane than Northern
industrialists.
2. Living conditions were sparse –a room/cabin limited furnishings and over
crowded conditions.
3. Food was rationed once a week -meat, corn meal, and molasses supplemented
by their own garden
4. Clothing was minimal and barely adequate for winter
5. Children learned from watching the treatment their parents received
–beatings, whipping, violation of black women, family members sold
away
–treatment of white children
6. Learned to get along by apparent acquiesce to white demands
–manner of pretense –a charade of servile bows and counterfeit smiles
–many Southerners believed that slaves were both less intelligent and
more loyal than they really were.
D. House Servants
1. Might at first glance seem less demanding
–better fed, clothed and more access to information
–one of the biggest surprises of the Civil War was the eagerness of their
house slaves to flee.–often the first to organize mass desertions.
2. For small slave owner –AA were in constant presence of whites and white
supervision.
–rarely saw their families if they were female nurse or personal maid
–cooks and other house servants were subject to whims and temper of whole
family–including children as they grew and tested their matery
–forced to act ingratiating–eg. Uncle Tom’s Cabin the image of ever-smiling
mammy
3. Bonds built between white children and their black nannies were for a time
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intimate but were severed as the price of the white child joining the master class.
E. Artisans and Skilled Workers
1. Skilled slaves: seamstress, carpenters, weavers, blacksmiths, mechanics
2. Many jobs in the South were held in the north only by whites
–south failed to attract much immigrant labor from Europe
3. Free AA had opportunities as skilled laborers.
F. Field Work and Gang System of Labor
1. Demanding year round –planting in April; cultivation through June; picking in
August to December
–in gangs of twenty or twenty-five
2. sun up to sun down and during harvest season longer–18hrs. day.
3. Hard work and a valuable slave was worth at least $1000 to his master.
4. Poor diet etc. undermined longevity of slaves –elders were honored by AA
community but barely tolerated by white owners who regularly evicted elderly slaves.
G. Sold “Down the River”
1. Forced migration into old southwest
–a long ordeal that slave owners feared that slaves would resent the
separation from family.
2. Upper South slave owners sold slaves to large trading firms.
–collected in the summer in slave pens in Richmond, Nashville or
Baltimore
–during cool weather they were marched, shipped to New Orleans
3. Most slaves were sold individually and rarely motivated to keep family
members together.
4. Most young men were sent to clear fields for cultivation.
–backbreaking work and often under inhumane conditions
5. The Old southwest offered opportunity for whites but bred tensions by forcible
sale and migration
–fear by whites that resentful gangs might resist or rebel.
III. The African American Community
A. Slave Families
1. Family essential to AA culture
–marriage was not recognized by law
–however, most slave owners encouraged some kind of wedding or arranged
marriage.
–saw this as a way of further control of slaves
2. Slave marriages were different from patriarchal white marriage
–more equal–cooperative effort at loving and sheltering children and made efforts
to teach family history as well as provide a kinship network.
–strength of family ties was demonstrated after CW when blacks went searching
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for family members
–ads in newspapers and with freedmen’s Bureau went into the 1870s searching for
family members.
3. Fear of separation was great
–one in five families were broken; one in three children were sold away from their
family.
–shows that their slave’s marriage was secondary with slave owners financial
concerns
–slaves relied therefore on larger kinship networks, children having respect for all
the elders and a conscience rejection of white paternalism.
B. African American Religion
1. Africanism survived in AA slave communities–thought to be “superstitions or
folk beliefs”
–religious ceremonies survived–into the woods AA slaves often were heard
drumming, singing, and dancing.
2. Africanisms reshaped AA Christianity
–a fusion of African elements of group activity–circle dance,
call/response, group singing
–emotion, enthusiasm and protest
–black spirituals were both joyous and mournful but also filled with
subversive messages.
3. Slaves introduced to Christianity
–via- First/Second Great Awakening.
–1790 number of AA converts, preachers and lay teachers grew rapidly
4. First churches-Philadelphia
–AA Baptist 1794 Rev. Absalom Jones
–AME –1816 Rev. Richard Allen
5. Evangelical Religion of south
–powerful means of empowerment, help for surviving slave system,
expression of spiritual freedom as well inspiring active resistence.
–Evangelical slave owners felt that their slaves should not be denied this
religious experience
–But Evangelicalism also acted as a form of social control
–owners used their religion to counteract appeal of AA Christianity and
insist on obedience by requiring their slaves to attend white church services
–they may have gone to white church during the day on Sunday but at
night they often would “steal away” for their own prayer services
C. Freedom and Resistance
1. Most slave escapes were in Upper South
2. Lower south was too far away and slave patrols determined to prevent escapes.
3. Harriet Tubman –Moses of the Underground Railroad
–19 slave rescues of over 300 slaves.
D. Slave Revolts
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1. 1831 Nat Turner –a rebellion in which a number of white people were killed
–Gabriel Prosser organized a thousand slaves to assault Richmond
–had hoped for help from the independent black people of Haiti
–Denmark Vesey a former seaman who lived in Charleston a free black
and lay preacher in Charleston’s AME Church
–recruited 80 country and city slaves who were trusted house
slaves of governor Thomas Bennett
-- eventually they were betrayed at the last minute.
2. Revolts raised the fear and concern of whites that their most trusted slaves were
conspiring to kill their masters.
–destroyed the AME church a site of radical ideas
—SC legislature passed a bill requiring black seamen to be seized and
jailed while their ships were in Charleston harbor.
3. Both Tuner and Vesey drew on religious commitment and religious vision
–Turner was eventually captured accidentally after he had hidden for two months
in the woods. He eventually dictated his confession to lawyer Thomas Grey.
–commenting on his composure–“made my blood curdle”
–if slaves such as Turner and Vesey could plot revolts how could white
Southerners feel safe?
E. Free African Americans
1. 250,000 free black people lived in South
2. Manumission was more likely before 1830 as law became more restrictive
3. Most free black people lived in the Upper South countryside where they were
tenant farmers or farm laborers.
–urban blacks were more visible
–life was difficult for female headed families because of available jobs.
–skilled work included blacksmithing /carpentry
IV. The White Majority
A. The Middle Class
1. Urban growth lagged behind the north
2. commercial cities grew around major shipping ports along the Miss or Gulf
B. Yeomen
1. British term for a farmer who works his own land–applied to independent
farmers of the South who lived on family size farms.
2. In areas where they lived side by side large plantation owners their interests
intersected
3. Only in the up-country communities did yeomen truly feel independent.
C. Poor white people
1. One third of farmers were tenant farmers
2. 30-50% southern white people were landless.
3. Relations between poor white and blacks was complex
–whites worked side by side with blacks
–were socially and sexually intimate
–often supplied slaves with liquor; means of escape
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–often even violently that they were superior to blacks.
D. Yeoman values
1. Elected Andrew Jackson
2. universal manhood suffrage made white skin privilege even tho there was an
economic gap between rich and poor.
–the freedom yeomen so prized was founded on slavery and slavery was a
constant reminder of their freedom.
V. Planters
A. Small Slave Owners
1. The largest group of slave owners–yeomen farmers
2. one or two slaves
3. Most vulnerable to ag. downturn
B. The Old Planter Elite
1. 2.5% of slave owners that own 50+ slaves
2. inherited wealth
3. the smaller slaveowners made up a clear political majority
C. The Natchez “Nabobs”
1. new wealth
2. Of AL/Miss, LA, Texas rich cotton planters and brokers
D. Plantation Life
1.Large estates had elegant mansions, grounds, and revolved around a number of
masculine activity: hunting, soldiering, politics
2. Self-sufficient
3. paternalistic ideology infused the life of large plantations.
4. family ideal with the master as the head of all b/w members.
5. privilege, duty –a burden to supervise everyone’s life and cotnribution.
6. Believed in the benevolent community of the slave plantation
E. The Plantation Mistress
1. Governed by separate spheres
2. barred from public life taught to embrace the domestic role.
3. Unlike their Northern counterparts who expanded the private sphere into the
public via social concerns and reform.
4. locked to heavy responsibilities with little control or power.
–responsible for caring for all the family members.
5, Suffered from isolation and humiliation if the master was having relations with
his slave women.
VI. Defense of Slavery
A. Developing Proslavery Arguments
1. three areas of justification
2. The Bible, histories of Greece/Rome; the law or constitution
3. Missouri Compromise caused Southerners to fear anti-slavery opinion and Nat
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Turner caused them to fear slave rebellions.
B. After Nat Turner
1. South closed ranks –1831
2. British gave notice that is abolishing slavery on sugar plantations
3. Nullification crisis –other Southern states joined with SC in belief that protect
themselves from federal encroachment was militant, vehement defense of slavery.
–1835 new laws controlling slaves–forbidding them to read/write
–no organized social activities without whites present
–slave patrols
–1836 gag rule–prevent Washington from considering abolitionist
petitions.
4. Moved beyond defensive arguments–
–George Fitzhugh–1854 asserted that Negro slaves were the happiest on
earth –contrasted southern benevolent paternalism with the cruel, heartless individualism of the
Northern wage slave labor system.
C. Changes in the South
1. Protest of non-slaveholding delegates in VA legislature almost gained a
majority that wanted a gradual abolition measure
2. slave owners declined from 36% to 25% in 1860 as slave prices increased it
became more difficult for only the wealthy to own them.
3. Slave system was disintegrating in urban areas
4. Increased division between yeomen farmers and planter elites.
–higher land prices, commercialization and impact of market economy on up
country farmers who felt threatened by banks, railroads, and state govern.
5. The defense of slavery stifled debate on any alternative labor system and
narrowed the possibility of cooperation in national politics.
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