King Cotton
• South produced more than ½ the world’s
cotton
• Prosperity of both N, S, and Britain
depended on cotton (and slaves)
• N shippers reaped profit from trade
• South was aware that Britain was
economically dependent on cotton
• “Cotton was King”
• Gave South power
Planter “Aristocracy”
• Before Civil War, South was more of an oligarchy than a
democracy – “Cottonocracy”
• 1850 – 1,733 families owned >100 slaves
• Provided political and social leadership
• Effects:
• Widened gap b/w rich and poor
• Hampered public schooling – rich sent children to private
schools
• Southern Women
• Control (large household staffs)
• No bonds of womanhood – slaveholding women rarely
supported abolition and did not protest when husbands split
slave families
Slaves and the Slave System
• Plantation agriculture was wasteful
• Excessive cultivation or “land butchery”
• Led to exodus of population to N and NE
• Monopolistic
• Small farmers sold holdings to others and left
• Big get bigger, Small get smaller
• Financial Instability of Plantation System
• Over-speculation of lands and slaves
• Dangerous dependence on one-crop economy
• No diversification of agriculture or manufacturing
• Repelled European immigration
• Competition with slave labor
• High cost of fertile land
• Europeans didn’t know how to grow cotton
The White Majority
1,733
families own
> 100 slaves
Only about ¼ owned or
belonged to slave owning
families
Smaller slave-owners usually lived on
modest farms and worked beside their
few slaves
Whites who owned no slaves, Subsistence farmers
Had no direct stake in continuing slavery, but were some of the
most active supporters. Why?
Free African Americans
• Most free African Americans in the south
were mulattoes (freed children of a white
planter)
• Some purchased their freedom
• Many free blacks owned property (New
Orleans)
• Some owned slaves (however, very few)
• Unpopular in South and North
• Irish competition for jobs
• Anti-black feelings were often stronger in
North than South
• Spread of slavery = prejudice
Plantation Slavery
• Legal importation of African slaves ended in
1808
• Significance?
• Smuggling
• Natural Reproduction!
• Slaves were seen as investments
• By 1860 – Deep south states (SC, FL, MS, AL,
LA) were over 50% African American
• Also had about ½ of ALL slaves in the south
• Division of families on auction block
• Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Life Under the Lash
• Conditions varied for slaves
• No civil or political rights
• Marriages not legally recognized
• Floggings
• However, lash marks hurt resale value
• Typical planter had too much of his own prosperity riding
on the backs of his slaves
• Forced Separation of Families
• More common on smaller plantations
• AA were able to sustain family life – most raised in stable
two-parent homes
• Maintained cultural roots
• Did not intermarry (unlike planter aristocracy)
• Religion – mixture of African and Christian elements
Fighting back
• Slaves were denied dignity and education.
• No sense of responsibility or independence – stripped from
them.
• 9/10 of adult salves were illiterate in 1861.
• How did they rebel?
•
•
•
•
•
•
Slowed labor
Stole food and other goods
Sabotaged equipment
Poisoned mater’s food
Ran away
Armed insurrection
• Gabriel – Richmond, VA – 1800
• Denmark Vesey – Charleston, SC – 1822
• Nat Turner – VA -- 1831
Early Abolitionism
• Anti-slavery societies
• Quakers – American Revolution
• Some believed in transporting back to Africa
• American Colonization Society (1817)
• Republic of Liberia (1822)
• Appealed to early antislavery crowd like Lincoln
• Abolition gains momentum
• 1833 – Britain frees West Indies slaves
• 2nd Great Awakening
• Grew more radical – William Lloyd Garrison w/
The Liberator and Frederick Douglas
South Responds to Calls for
Abolition
• VA legislature debated (and defeated) several
emancipation propositions in 1831-1832
• Slave states tightened their slave codes
• Slavery Supporters Respond
• Slavery was supported by the Bible
• Good for Africans
• Happier in the south than working in the North
•
•
•
•
Fresh air
Sunlight
No worries of unemployment
Cared for in their old age
Abolitionist Impact
• Endangered free speech
• Gag Resolution – anti-slavery appeals are to be tabled w/out debate
(right of petition)
• 1835 -- Postmasters ordered to destroy abolitionist material
(freedom of press)
• Abolitionists (radical ~ Garrison) were unpopular in the
North
• Northerners revered the Constitution
•
•
•
•
talk of succession angered many in the North – created disorder
Economically tied to the South
$300 million in loans to the South
Cotton to NE textile mills
• By 1850, abolitionists had made impact
• However, many N did not support outright abolishment
• Opposed extending it to the western territories