The Old South: Cotton, Slavery, and King Cotton, 1800-1860

1. Chapter 11The South, Slavery, and King Cotton, 1800-1860

2. Cotton and Slavery

3. The Distinctiveness of the Old South • Staple Crops • Tobacco was environmentally harmful to grow consistently as it leached the land of nutrients. to retain the viability of their land, famers would look for other crops to plant in addition to tobacco, such as rice, indigo, and sugar, as well as cotton. • Agricultural Diversity • 3 distinctly different regions. The first was the Lower South, made up of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. These states were renowned for their labor-intensive cotton plantations. • The second group, comprising Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas, was the Middle South. They grew diversified crops and were not reliant on cotton as their only export. • The final group was the Upper South, which included Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, a region where slavery had already begun to decline. • Manufacturing and Trade- not be enough support for this endeavor to allow manufacturing to catch up to the North.

4. Cotton Production, 1821

5. Population Growth and Cotton Production, 1821–1859

6. Atop the Cotton Kingdom

7. Whites in the Old South • Background of the South Agrarian Economy • When the United States won its independence, the South chose to continue on with their relations with Great Britain which, by the 1850s, was the chief purchaser of its cotton. • White Planters • a planter was a man who owned at least twenty slaves. Prior to the Civil War, planters made up 4 percent of southern society. • The Plantation Mistress • “Plain White Folk” • The most numerous members of white society in the South were the middle class, generally small farmers who were usually mobile and willing to go where jobs and land were available. Very few of them had slaves.

8. Mary Chestnut

9. Whites in the Old South, continued • “Poor Whites”- lower class, usually hunted or foraged for survival • Honor and Violence

10. Black Society in the South • “Free Persons of Color” • The smallest number of African Americans in the South were the freedmen, individuals who had either never been slaves or had purchased their freedom from their masters. Only about 10 percent of the entire African population in 1860 were freedmen. • Rural and Urban Slavery • As slaves were costly to purchase and required care, the majority of all slaves in the South resided on plantations. They were usually divided into two categories, household slaves and field slaves. • household slaves were usually skilled and treated better than the field hands, who were forced to work long hours outdoors. • Those slaves who lived in the cities experienced greater interactions with their masters and others in the area. Typically, the most visible of these served as street vendors or making handicrafts. • Slave Women – encouraged to be pregnant, less work and more food.Required to carry child with them in field.

11. Free Blacks

12. Slave Population, 1820

13. Slave Population, 1860

14. Jack (1850)

15. Black Society in the South, continued • Celia • The slave Celia was a teenage girl who was made her owner’s mistress. Eventually she killed him in self-defense. She was not allowed by law to testify at her trial. She was found guilty and executed. • Slave Families • Slave marriages were not recognized by states, as a slave could be sold at any moment, regardless of relationship status. Childhood for most slaves ended at five, when they were expected to begin helping out on the land. • Forging a Slave Community • slaves tended to form communities based, not on blood, but on the common experiences shared by their members. • African American Religion and Folklore • slaves would often turn to a slave preacher in what were known as “bush meetings.”

16. Slave Family in a Georgia Cotton Field

17. Plantation Burial (1860)

18. Resistance • Slave Rebellions • Slave insurrections were quite rare, as they were usually met with overwhelming force and the conspirators killed. • The most famous insurrection was Nat Turner’s Rebellion in Virginia, in which over fifty whites were killed before the rebellion was put down.

19. The Confessions of Nat Turner

20. The South • The South—A Region Apart

21. This concludes the Lecture PowerPoint presentation for Chapter 11 The South, Slavery, and King Cotton Please visit the Student Site for more resources: http://wwnorton.com/college/history/america10/