1. Machinery sales began to increase dramatically
in the early-to-mid 1800s. Who purchased a
majority of these finished products?
2. How did westward expansion impact
mechanical and agricultural innovation?
3. How did McCormick help the North, and
Whitney help the South?
4. Concerning industrial progress, what was the
American System?
5. What contributed to rising prosperity during
the early-to-mid 1800s?
6. What more than anything contributed to
the increased sales of newspapers in the
early 1800s?
7. Who enjoyed the Minstrel shows the
most?!
8. What did PT Barnum contribute to
America?
9. Why did fiction take off as a literary
genre during this time period?
10. Define Transcendentalism.
Forced the South to rethink slavery
Many in Virginia began to wonder if gradual
emancipation would be a wise choice
Others begin to double down on the
structural control of the institution
How did this happen?
The South gradually expanded south and west
Indian removal made this expansion easier
British textile industry was a boom
Lower South was suited to the cultivation of
cotton
Wet springs and summers, dry autumns
Cotton requires neither expensive irrigation
canals nor costly machinery
Did not even require an abundance of slaves
In 1860 between 35-50% of cotton farmers did not
own slaves
However, southern slave population nearly
doubled in the early 1800s, and cotton employed
¾ of all southern slaves
The numbers of growth grew together
Cotton was also compatible with the growing of
corn (planted and harvested before or after)
Acreage of corn in the South exceeded cotton
This did allow the South to be somewhat self
sufficient (money did not drain out of the region)
1. residents in the Lower had come from the
Upper
2. all white southerners benefited from the
3/5 compromise
3. abolitionists clumped all southerner
together
4. profitability of cotton and sugar
increased the price of all slaves throughout
the region
North continued to urbanize; the South
continued to remain rural
South’s urban was ½ that of New England and
the mid-Atlantic states
Why?
Lack of industries (only 10% of U.S.
manufacturing)
Industrial output was less than New
Hampshire’s
Why?
Southern factories were small and produced for
local markets
Examples: grain to flour; corn to meal; logs to
lumber
Industrial slavery scared Southerners
Too much independence
Problem of money, not labor
Give up slaves (status); cash crops were a “sure
thing”
South also has an “education deficiency”
Reluctance to tax property
Rejection of compulsory nature
Unconvinced of the need
Little dependency on the written word
Few complex economic transactions
Planters did not care for an educated poor white
workforce
The Planters
The Small Slaveholders
The Yeomen
The People of the Pine Barrens
Twenty+ slaves
Plantations with a high level of division of labor
Domestic staff, pasture staff, outdoor artisans,
indoor artisans, and field hands
Planters vie with one another for stately
mansions
However the wealth is in the slaves ($1700 per
slave)
If one sells a slave, he gives up his prestigious
status
Plantations were expensive with high fixed
costs
Large plantation owners were often indebted
to agents
Planters often moved and it disrupted their
social connections
They coped by sometimes leaving the
plantations to overseers
Plantation mistresses had many
responsibilities
Had to deal with the abundance of
mulatto children
88% of all slaveholders owned fewer than 20
slaves; most fewer than 10
1 of every 5 slaves employed outside of
agriculture
These slave holders were younger
Nonslaveholding family farmers – largest
single group of southern whites
Most were landowners (50-200 acres) and
did hire slaves at harvest time; most of their
acreage was subsistence crops
Tended to settle in the upland regions
(Piedmont, hill country)
Leading characteristic was self-sufficiency,
with modest profit; most transactions took
place within the community
10% of southern whites
Lived where they did by choice
They were the evidence by northerners that
slavery degraded poor whites
However, they could feed themselves where the
urban poor could not
The Americans of the South are brave,
comparatively ignorant, hospitable, generous,
easy to irritate, violent in their resentment,
without industry or the spirit of enterprise.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Planters and urban commercial were Whig
Yeomen tended to be Democrats
The four social groups tended to settle in
different regions
More mingling in the Upper South than the
Lower
Whites did not work for whites, so there was a
certain amount of independence
Between 1830-60 slaveholders gained an increasing
proportion of the South’s wealth
The size of this class shrank to 25% from 36% during
that same time
Some southerners began supporting reopening the
slave trade to cash in on status
Others took to Hinton Helper’s The Impending Crisis
of the South
Called on nonslaveholding class to end slavery for their
own self interest
Why not attack the institution?
Hope to become a slaveholder
Acceptance of racial assumptions
Emancipation meant a race war
Positive good instead of a necessary evil
Ancient civilizations had it
Better than “wage slavery” of the North
Religious argument began
St. Paul’s words
Abolitionists were trying to destroy the family
Churches split into southern wings
They provide the opportunity for Christian
responsibility
Murder rate was 10X higher
Slavery helped create the violent white
south
Honor and a sensitivity to ones reputation
Dueling was a refined alternative to
random violence of the lower classes
Recourse through the law struck many as
cowardly
Gentlemen could recognize gentlemen
1700s and 1800s was different
1700s- young, diverse regional origin, mostly
men
Slave trade ended in 1808
After that, male/female balance created a
native-born slave population
Northern factory workers did not have drivers
White overseers and black drivers
Advancement within slavery was the goal for
many
House slave often had disdain for the field
hands and poor whites
Law provided neither recognition nor
protection of the slave family
A slave could witness the sale of 11 family
members
Marriage? Until death or distance do you
part
Slaves created their own family morality
Fictive kin
North America is #1
1. gender equalized more rapidly
2. other crops, etc.
Perennial shortage of white labor
Slave or free, nonagricultural labor was
easier to find in the South
No immigrants
Lure of cotton farming to poor whites
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