Chapter 9The Old South,

1790-1850

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Old Farms: The Southeast

• The Chesapeake• In 1790, chief crop was tobacco

• Slaves

• Tobacco depleted soil, forced planters to try other crops

• Tenant farmers

• Switch to grain crops increased need for male and artisan slaves• Slave women performed other farm and domestic work

• Chesapeake farmers needed less slaves• Birth rate offset any emancipation of slaves

Old Farms: The Southeast (cont)

• The Lowcountry• South Carolina and Georgia

• Rice coast

• Needed many slaves

• Task System• Rice coast population was 80 to 90% slave

• Tasks were assigned, slave’s time was their own upon completion of tasks

• Worked for hire, tended “own” garden plots or livestock

New Farms: The Rise of the Deep South

• Short-staple cotton• Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793

• Allowed for expansion of Cotton Belt

• By 1815, Cotton Belt expanded into uplands of Georgia and South Carolina• Native peoples driven out

• Jeffersonian republicans ended Indian resistance and secured access to international markets for cotton planters

• Interstate Slave Trade• By 1820, slave trade was well organized

• Middle passage

Cotton gin

• His cotton gin removed the seeds out of raw cotton.

Rise of the Deep South (cont)

• Cotton plantation very profitable• Slaves did back-breaking work in gangs under an overseer

• Plantations commercialized, grew nothing but cotton

• Slaves worked from dawn to dusk

• None of the freedom of task labor

• Material conditions for slaves improved

• Plantation masters were elite of the South• Number of slaves as measure of success

• Successful southern ladies did not work

• Southern families• Distrusted outsiders and defended rural neighborhoods

• Code of honor

Southern Yeomanry

• Cotton profitable only for large plantations• In 1830, only 1/3 of southern whites owned any slaves• Taxes drove poor whites out of good land• Many settled in areas unsuitable for plantation crops• Some yeoman produced livestock over plantation crops, a larger group

practiced mixed farming• “Subsistence plus” agriculture

• Yeoman (freely owned farms) neighborhoods• Farms self-sufficient, traded labor and goods with each other• Marketed surplus at country stores• Lived simple life with few luxuries• Relied a great deal on family labor

Private Lives of Slaves

• Plantation success rested on slave-master accommodation• Slave privileges helped to ensure obedience and order

• Slave marriages encouraged and respected

• Broad wives (female slaves whose husband was owned by another master)

• Still, slave families were vulnerable

• Children often spread their affection across a broad extended family

Private Lives of Slaves (cont)

• Southern Evangelicals embraced slaves and considered their souls worth saving• Difficulty was that many slaves refused to accept the legitimacy

of slavery

• Led slaves to form their own churches• Utilized conjuring, folk magic, root medicine, and other occult

knowledge, most of it passed down from Africa (voodoo andSanteria-also known as La Religión, Regla de Ocha, La ReglaLucumí or Lukumi, is a syncretic religion of West African andCaribbean origin influenced by and syncretized with RomanCatholicism. Its liturgical language, a dialect of Yorùbá, is alsoknown as Lucumí.)

• Gave slaves sense of themselves as a historical people

Religion and Revolt• Escapes and other forms of resistance more common than

revolts

• Slave Christianity tempered resistance• Gabriel’s Revolt

• Working covertly

• Planned to gather a slave army to seize Richmond

• Weather, white terror, and black betrayal foiled revolt

• Denmark Vesey conspiracy, 1822• Slaves would rise up and seize Charleston

• Then commandeer ships and make their escape

• Betrayed by slaves themselves

• Nat Turner revolt, 1831• Received notice in vision that God wanted him to lead revolt in

Southampton County, Virginia

• Bloody, but unsuccessful, revolt ensued

• Southern whites deeply troubled by slave revolts

Plantation and Southern Growth

• Plantations were profitable• In 1860, slaves alone were worth $3 billion dollars

• Land and slaves provided esteem in the South

• Purchased outside goods at a lower rate than North

• South did not take advantage of new technologies• Slaves used instead of new technology

• Southern governments made little internal improvements

• Commercial and manufacturing developed far less than in the North

The Old South Quiz

1. Under the task system what could slaves do in their spare time?

2. When short staple cotton was developed, whose cotton gin had an affect on Southern society?

3. How did tenant and yeoman farmers differ in the South?

4. Name one of the major slave rebellions noted in this chapter.

5. Slave rebellions did not have any level of success. Give one reason why they failed.