Chapter 12: The Old South

• The south was the most distinctive

The Distinctiveness of the Old South

• Peculiar Institution

• Most whites did not own slaves but continued to support it

• Slavery

• Slaves were profitable and seen as less than whites

• Lower South

• South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas (7 states)

• Cotton production and slave labor

• Slaves ≈ ½ population

• Middle South

• Virgina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas (4 states)

• Diverse agricultural economies

• Large areas without slavery

• Upper or Border South

• Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri (4 states)

• Slavery beginning to decline by 1860

• Paternalism: white slave owners in the upper south (who held fewer slaves) were so morally ambivalent about slavery that they adopted an attitude of Paternalism → incorporating them into their households

• Colonization: ship slaves and freed black to Africa or encourgae owners upon their deaths to free their slaves (George Washington)

• Dollar values of slaves soared; white planters from the lower south tried to frow slavery into new western territories; voted for sucession in 1861 to form the Conferderate States of America

• Cotton

• Most profitable cash crop in the south

• 1. Invention of the cotton gin

• 2. Demand from Britain and France

• 3. Aggressive cultivation of farmlands in the newer states of Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Louisiana (Old South West)

• Chained gangs called coffles

• By 1860 the center of the cotton belt stretched from eastern North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia through the fertile Alabama Mississippi black belt (called for the color of the soil) through Louisiana to Texas and up the Mississippi River valley to Southern Illinois

• Industrialization in the south

• By 1840 southerners decided they needed to manufacture and trade on their own because they relied on the North

• Factory owner hired blacks to work in the factories

White Society in the South

• Planter

• Had to own 20 slaves

• 1/30 whites were a planter 

• The mistress of the plantations supervised the domestic household

• Overseers

• Middle class small farmers, skilled workers, or sons of planters

• Helped oversee large plantations

• “A worthless set of vagabonds”

• Slaves were called drives (highest position a slave could have), who were in charge of small groups (gangs)

• Yeomen

• Small farmers

• Most numerous

• Lived in 2 room cabins

• North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama

Black Society in the South

• Mulattoes

• People with mixed racial ancestry

• 10% of black population

• Charleston and New Orleans

• Some became slave owners

• Jehu Jones (hotel owner)

• Cyprien Ricard (slave owner) - 91 slaves

• William Johnson 

•  3 barbershops 

• 1,500 acres of land

• Held several slaves

• End of African slave trade

• Congress outlawed American involvement with the African slave trade in 1808

• Convince some owners to treat slaves better

• Encouraged enslaved women to have many kids

• Domestic slave trade

• Celia was an abused slave who killed her master 

• Slave communities: slaves not legally allowed to marry, but still chose partners and forging a family

• Spirituals: encoded songs to express their frustration at being kept in bondage

• Religion

• A mixture of African, Caribbean, and Bible inspiring in its tribute to the poor and oppressed

• Embraced the promise of salvation

• Whites paranoid of supposed uprisings

• Gabriel Prosser

• Blacksmith

• Hatched an unsuccessful revolt on a plantation in Richmond

• Hanged

• Charles Deslondes

• Largest slave revolt

• North of New Orleans

• Group of slaves raided their masters house and did the same to other plantations

• Whites and militia stopped them

• Deslondes is mixed

• Got his hand severed and thighs broken, shot and burned

• Those who helped him got beheaded and their heads were put on stakes by the Mississippi river

• Denmark Vessey

• Rebels planned to seize ships in Charleston harbor, burn the city, and head to Santo domingo (Haiti)

• His plan never took off

• 35 supposed rebels were executed + 34 deported

• City response → curtailing the liberties of free blacks

• Nat Turner

• Rural Virginia

• Believed he had a divine mission in leading a slave rebellion

• Preacher

• Convince of mission due to solar Eclipse (Feb 1831)

• Small group of slaves killed white adults, children, and infants in his owners household and repeating this down the road

• “Blood-stained monster”

• Captured for 6 weeks, tried, found guilty, hanged

• Virginia Legislature responded by restricting slaves to learn to read or write and gather for religious meetings

• Southerner’s wants of slave protection drives their political focus from 1830s and after

Timeline:

• 1800: Gabriel Prosser's revolt

• 1808: Congress outlaws American involvement with the African slave trade

• 1811: Charles Deslondes’s revolt

• 1831: Nat Turner’s rebellion

• 1840: South industrializes

• 1861: Succession

Chapter 13