The South and The Slavery Controversy

1793-1860

Chapter 16

Eli Whitney

• 1793 – invents the cotton gin

• Made the wide-scale cultivation of short-staple cotton possible

• Cotton becomes staple crop of the South and creates demand for labor

The Cotton Kingdom

• Cotton is King

• Southern bottomlands of the Gulf States

• Planters bought more slaves and more land to grow cotton.

• Cotton – ½ value of all American exports after 1840 & more than ½ world’s cotton

• Britain dependent on Southern cotton

Planter Aristocracy• South had an oligarchy – rule by the few

• 1,733 families owned 100 or more slaves by 1850

• They were the political and social leadership of the South

• Widened the gap between rich and poor

Plantation Women• Plantation mistress –

commanded sizable number of female slaves

• Cooks, maids, seamstresses, laundresses, and body servants

• Virtually ALL southern women were against abolition

Slavery• Plantations became

monopolies

• Slaves – heavy investment of capital

• Up to $1,200 for good field hand

• Southerners had a great deal of $ tied up in slaves

• Slaves would deliberately hurt themselves or run away

Slavery

• South – dangerous dependence on one crop economy

• Price level of cotton @ mercy of world condition

Foreigners In South

• 1860

• 4.4% of South was foreign born

• 18.7% of North was foreign born

• Compete with slave labor, land was expensive, no knowledge of cotton

Slave Owners

• By 1860, ¾ of whites owned NO slaves at all

• Scratched a simple living with corn and hogs, not cotton

• Poorest whites – “poor white trash,” “hillbillies,” “crackers,” “clay eaters”

• Sick, malnutrition, hookworm, very poor

Irony

• No matter the social status of whites, almost all defended slavery

• “American Dream” – buy a few slaves and get in on the riches

• Presumed racial superiority

• Logic of economics clashed with logic of racism

Mountain Whites

• Hillbillies• Cut off from most of society in West

Virginia, Northern Georgia and Alabama• Society passed them by – frontier

conditions• Civil War was “rich man’s war, poor man’s

fight.”• Staunchly Republican and Unionist

250,000 Free Blacks in South by 1860

• Many freed mulattos

• Children of white master

• Some purchased freedom

• South’s “third race”

• Sizable # in New Orleans

250,000 Free Blacks in North

• Several northern states forbade blacks

• Barred from schools, jobs

• Irish hated blacks because they competed for jobs

Plantation Slavery

• 1860 – South had 4 million slaves

• Legal importation of slaves ended 1808

• 1000s imported illegally

• “black ivory” very valuable

• Planters regarded slaves as investments

• $2 Billion in slave capital by 1860

• Primary form of wealth in South

Value of Slaves

• Blacks often sparred from dangerous work• Roofing, tunnel blasting reserved for wage

earning Irish• Breeding sometimes encouraged…• Some females given freedom if they gave

birth to 10 kids• Open sale of human flesh with cattle, horses

was a revolting sight

Life of Slaves

• No political or civil rights

• Floggings – the whip served as motivator instead of wage-incentive

• Worked dawn to dusk in the eye of white overseer or black “driver”

• “breakers” would beat slaves into submission

Slaves

• Savage beatings would result in sullen workers

• Marks = declined resale value

• Masters had too much riding on slaves to beat them too badly

The Lower South• Lower Mississippi River Valley in Deep

South• Blacks accounted for up to 75% of pop.• Family life – stable• 2 parent families• Separation more common on small farms• Family ID with names and customs• No 1st cousin marriages like whites in

plantation life

African American Religion

African American Religion

• African Americans were heavily Christianized by the Second Great Awakening

• Black slavery molded religion

• Christian elements from the captivity of Israelites in Egypt

• “Pharaoh, let my people go!”

Bondage

• Bottom line – slavery was degrading

• Deprived dignity, sense of responsibility, individuality

• Slaves denied education and literacy

• Reading brought ideas which brought discontent

• 9/10 of adult slaves illiterate in 1860

Slave Reaction to Bondage

• Slowed pace of labor to just above the lash

• Myth of black “laziness” by whites

• Stole food from “big house” and other goods

• Sabotaged machinery – no machines = no work

• Even poisoned masters’ food

White Life

• White’s lived uneasy in a state of imagined siege

• Potentially rebellious blacks outnumbered them

• Northern propaganda flooded South• Booker T. Washington – former slave said,

“Whites can’t hold a black down in a ditch without getting down in the ditch.”

Early Abolition

• Antislavery societies focused on moving slaves back to Africa

• The American Colonization Society (1817)

• Set up the Republic of Liberia in 1822 on the fever stricken W. African coast

• Capital – Monrovia named after James Monroe

Abolition

• Strange civilization to African Americans

• Almost all slaves born in US, no longer African, but distinctly African American with own history and culture

Abolition

• 1830s – new abolition movement fueled by the Second Great Awakening

• 1833 – Great Britain freed its slaves in the West Indies

• Beecher family – authors, preachers, abolitionists

Radical Abolition

• 1831 – William Lloyd Garrison

• Published The Liberator

• 30 year war of words

Frederick Douglass• Escaped from slavery

in 1838 @ 21

• Gave speech in 1841 and impressed abolitionists

• Taught himself to read and write

• 1845 –wrote Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass

White Defense• Whites said slavery was supported by the

Bible & Aristotle

• Good for Africans b/c it lifted them from barbarism of the jungle, and clothed them in a Christian civilization

• Master-slave relationship like family

• Jail type form of Social Security

• 1836 Gag Resolution – all anti-slavery legislation tabled from House and Senate