Chapter 10
The South and Slavery
Chapter Ten
The South and Slavery,
1790s—1850s
Part One:
Introduction
Chapter Focus Questions
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How did the slave system dominate southern life?
What were the economic implications of "King
Cotton"?
How did African Americans create communities
under slavery?
What was the social structure of the white South?
Why was the white South increasingly defensive?
Part Two:
American Community:
Natchez-under-the-Hill
Natchez Under-the-Hill
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Natchez and Natchez Under-the-Hill were
adjacent communities.
Natchez was an elegant planter community.
Natchez Under-the-Hill:
*mixed community of river men
*gamblers
*Indians
*and blacks.
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Gamblers, Undesirables, driven away due to
rumor
Part Three:
King Cotton and Southern
Expansion
This 1855 illustration of black stevadores loading heavy bales of cotton onto waiting steam
boats in New Orleans is an example of the South’s dependence on cotton and the slave labor
that produce it.
MAP 10.1 The South Expands, 1790–1850 This map shows the dramatic effect cotton
production had on southern expansion. From the original six states of 1790, westward
expansion, fueled by the search for new cotton lands, added another six states by 1821, and
three more by 1850.
Cotton and Expansion into the Old
Southwest
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Cotton gin revolutionizes Southern
economy.
After War of 1812 W. GA, AL and MI
Indians driven out.
Later, LA and TX settled.
Each surge ignited speculative frenzy.
See
next
map
MAP 10.2a Cotton Production and the Slave Population, 1820. In the forty-year period from
1820 to 1860, cotton production grew dramatically in both quantity and extent. Rapid westward
expansion meant that by 1860 cotton production was concentrated in the black belt (so called for its
rich soils) in the Lower South. As cotton production moved west and south, so did the enslaved
African American population that produced it, causing a dramatic rise in the internal slave trade.
SOURCE:Sam Bowers Hilliard,Atlas of Antebellum Southern Agriculture (Baton Rouge:Lousiana State University Press,1984).
FIGURE 10.2 Distribution of Slave Labor, 1850 In 1850, 55 percent of all slaves worked in
cotton, 10 percent in tobacco, and another 10 percent in rice, sugar, and hemp. Ten percent
worked in mining, lumbering, industry, and construction, and 15 percent worked as domestic
servants. Slaves were not generally used to grow corn, the staple crop of the yeoman farmer.
Slavery the Mainspring - Again
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1790 to1860, slave population grew from
700,000 to 4,000,000.
MAP 10.2b Cotton Production and the Slave Population, 1860.
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Expansion of cotton concentrated in the black
belt
A Slave Society in a Changing World
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Cotton economy committed South to
slavery.
In other parts US, attitudes toward slavery
were changing.
Congress banned the slave trade in 1808.
Part Four:
To Be A Slave
The immense size of the internal slave trade made sights like this commonplace on southern
roads. Groups of slaves, chained together in gangs called coffles, were marched from their
homes in the Upper South to cities in the Lower South, where they were auctioned to new
owners. SOURCE:Library of Congress.
One of the ways Charleston attempted to control its African American population was to
require all slaves to wear badges showing their occupation. After 1848, free black people also
had to wear badges, which were decorated, ironically, with a liberty cap.
SOURCE:Courtesy of the American Numismatic Society of New York.
The Internal Slave Trade
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Planter migration stimulated the slave trade.
Slaves were gathered in pens.
On foot, slaves moved on land in coffles.
Slave trade made mockery benevolence
claims.
MAP 10.3 Internal Slave Trade Between 1820 and 1860, nearly 50 percent of the slave
population of the Upper South was sold south to labor on the cotton plantations of the Lower
South. This map shows the various routes by which they were “sold down the river,” shipped
by boat or marched south. SOURCE:Historical Atlas of the United States (Washington:National Geographic Society,1988).
Sold “Down River”
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Cotton helped finance northern industry
and trade.
FIGURE 10.1 Cotton Exports as a Percentage of All U.S. Exports, 1800–1860 One
consequence of the growth of cotton production was its importance in international trade. The
growing share of the export market, and the great value (nearly $200 million in 1860) led southern
slave owners to believe that “Cotton Is King.” The importance of cotton to the national economy
entitled the South to a commanding voice in national policy, many Southerners believed.
SOURCE:Sam Bowers Hilliard,Atlas of Antebellum Southern Agriculture (Baton Rouge:Louisiana State University Press,1984),pp.67 –71.
This engraving from Harpers Weekly shows slaves, dressed in new clothing, lined up outside
a New Orleans slave pen for inspection by potential buyers before the actual auction began.
They were often threatened with punishment if they did not present a good appearance and
manner that would fetch a high price. SOURCE:U.S.slave market,ca.1863, in New Orleans.Courtesy of Culver Pictures,Inc.
Sold “Down River”
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Cotton and slavery tied up capital
South lagged in urban population,
industrialization, canals, and railroads.
Cotton created a distinctive regional culture.
Opening of western lands contributed to
instability of slave life.
Many slaves were separated from their
families.
Sold “Down River”
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Slaves’ first challenge was to survive
because:
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lived in one-room cabins with dirt floors and
few furnishings
neither their food and clothing was adequate
Slaves learned how to avoid punishments,
flattered whites.
Slave quarters built by slave
owners, like these pictured on a
Florida plantation, provided
more than the basic shelter (a
place to sleep and eat) that the
owners intended. Slave
quarters were the center of the
African American community life
that developed during slavery.
SOURCE:Remains of Slave Quarters, Fort George Island, Florida,
ca.1865.Stereograph.(c)Collection of The New York Historical Society.
African cultural patterns persisted in the preference for night funerals and for solemn
pageantry and song, as depicted in British artist John Antrobus’s Plantation Burial, ca. 1860.
Like other African American customs, the community care of the dead contained an implied
rebuke to the masters’ care of the living slaves. SOURCE:John Antrobus,Negro Burial The Historic New Orleans Collection.
Life of a Slave
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Some slaves worked as house servants.
Some slaves were skilled workers.
75 percent of slaves worked as field hands
Many suffered from poor health.
Part Five:
The African American
Community
Building the African American
Community
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Slaves community an indigenous culture.
Inluenced all aspects of Southern life.
Masters dealt with slave family and African
church.
Slave Families
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Slave marriages were:
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not recognized by law
frequently not respected by masters
a haven of love and intimacy for slaves
Parents gave children supportive, protective kinship
network.
Slave families were often split up.
Separated children drew upon supportive networks.
African American Religion
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Slaves not permitted to practice African religions
The first and second Great Awakenings introduced
Christianity to slaves.
In 1790s, African American churches began
emerging.
Whites hoped religion would make the slaves
obedient.
Slaves found a liberating message in church.
Harriet Tubman was 40 years old when this
photograph (later hand-tinted) was taken.
Already famous for her daring rescues, she
gained further fame by serving as a scout,
spy and nurse during the Civil War.
SOURCE:The Granger Collection.
Freedom and Resistance
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Most slaves understood they could not escape
bondage.
About 1,000 per year escaped.
Running away, then returning, was more
common.
This drawing shows the moment, almost two months after the failure of his famous and
bloody slave revolt, when Nat Turner was accidentally discovered in the woods near his
home plantation. Turner’s cool murder of his owner and methodical organization of his revolt
deeply frightened many white Southerners. SOURCE:Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Slave Revolts
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A few slaves organized revolts.
Gabriel Prosser and Denmark Vesey organized
large-scale conspiracies.
Nat Turner led most famous slave revolt in Virginia
in 1831.
Turner used religious imagery to lead slaves; they
killed 55 whites.
White southerners continually reminded by threat of
insurrection.
Free African Americans
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By 1860, 250,000 free African Americans.
In cities, free African American
communities flourished.
Blacks lacked basic civil rights.
Part Six:
The White Majority
The Middle Class
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A commercial middle class of merchants,
bankers, factors, and lawyers:
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arose to sell southern crops on the world market
lived in cities that acted as shipping centers for
agricultural goods
Poor White People
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30 to 50 % of southern whites were landless.
Poor whites lived a marginal existence.
Engaged clandestine relations with slaves
Yeomen hoped to acquire slaves themselves.
Yeomen felt slavery brought higher status..
Chart: Slaveholding and Class Structure
FIGURE 10.3 Slaveholding and Class Structure in the South, 1830 The great mass of the
southern white population were yeoman farmers. In 1830, slave owners made up only 36
percent of the southern white population; owners of more than fifty slaves constituted a tiny
2.5 percent. Yet they and the others who were middling planters dominated politics, retaining
the support of yeomen who prized their freedom as white men above class-based politics.
SOURCE:U.S.Bureau of the Census.
The goal of yeoman farm families was economic independence. Their mixed farming and
grazing enterprises, supported by kinship and community ties, afforded them a selfsufficiency epitomized by Carl G. von Iwonski’s painting of this rough but comfortable log
cabin in New Braunfels, Texas. SOURCE:Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library.Yanaguana Society Collection.
Yeomen Values
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Two-thirds of southern whites nonslaveholding.
Most yeomen were self-sufficient farmers.
Strong sense of community
Close kin connections and bartering.
Part Seven:
Planters
Small Slave Owners
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Most slaveholders owned only a few slaves.
Bad crops/high prices affected slave-holding
status
Middle class professionals climbed success
ladder.
Jackson used legal/political position to rise in
society.
The Planter Elite
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Most slaveholders inherited their wealth.
As slavery spread so did the slave-owning elite
Extraordinary concentration of wealth.
Most wealthy planters lived fairly isolated lives.
Some planters cultivated an image of gracious
living.
Plantations aimed to be self-sufficient.
This scene is part of a larger mural, created by artist William Henry Brown in 1842, which
depicts everyday life at Nitta Yuma, a Mississippi cotton plantation. The elegant white woman,
here seen elaborately dressed to go riding, depended for her leisure status on the work of
African American slaves, such as this one feeding her horse.
SOURCE:William H.Brown,Hauling the Whole Week ’s Picking (detail), 1842.Watercolor.The Historic New Orleans Collection.
The Plantation Mistress
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Southern paternalism:
*plantation was family with white master at
head.
Plantation mistress ran her own household.
Men not challenged.
Coercion and Violence
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slave system rested on coercion and violence.
Slave women vulnerable to sexual
exploitation.
Master-slave offspring rarely publicly
acknowledged.
This Louisiana slave named Gordon was
photographed in 1863 after he had
escaped to Union lines during the Civil
War. He bears the permanent scars of the
violence that lay at the heart of the slave
system. Few slaves were so brutally
marked, but all lived with the threat of
beatings if they failed to obey.
SOURCE:National Archives and Records Administration.
Part Eight:
The Defense of Slavery
Developing Proslavery Arguments
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Slavery gave rise to pro-slavery arguments:
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Justifications in the Bible or classical Greece and Rome
Constitution recognized slavery and they were defending
property rights
by 1830s arguments developed that slavery was good for
the slaves.
George Fitzhugh:
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contrasted slavery with the heartless individualism
ruled the lives of northern factory workers.
This 1841 proslavery cartoon contrasts healthy, well-cared-for African American slaves with
unemployed British factory workers living in desperate poverty. The comparison between
contented southern slaves and miserable northern “wage slaves” was frequently made by
proslavery advocates. SOURCE:Library of Congress.
Developing Proslavery Arguments
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George Fitzhugh contrasted slavery
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slaves a community of interests
North was heartless individualism ruling lives factory
workers.
Changes in the South
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Some southern whites objected to slavery.
Cost of slaves meant percentage of
slaveholders was declining.
Hinton Rowan Helper denounced the
institution.
Part Nine:
Conclusion
Population Patterns in the South, 1850
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In six southern states, slaves comprised over
40 percent of the total population.
MAP 10.4 Population Patterns in the South, 1850 In South Carolina and Mississippi, the enslaved
African American population outnumbered the white population; in four other Lower South states, the
percentage was above 40 percent. These ratios frightened many white Southerners. White people also
feared the free black population, though only three states in the Upper South and Louisiana had free black
populations of over 3 percent. Six states had free black populations that were so small (less than 1
percent) as to be statistically insignificant.