This chapter discusses the Old South's reliance on agriculture, particularly cotton, and the system of slavery that propped up this economy. It examines the social hierarchy of the South including the planter class, middle-class and poor whites, and the various classes of slaves. The chapter also explores the unique culture that slaves developed under the oppressive institution of slavery, which they sustained through language, music, religion, and family structure.

1. AP Chapter 11
Cotton, Slavery and the Old
South
The chapter is about the Old South—
different from the North. The South
began the 19th century agricultural
and it remained overwhelmingly
agrarian by the 1860’s—The South
grew but did not develop.

2. The Cotton Economy

3. South had a shift
• Why?
• Decline of tobacco
• Rice
• Sugar
• Short staple cotton—grew in many different
soils and climates
• Cotton Gin

4. Cotton is King
• 1820-500,000 bales of cotton
• 1850 3 million
• 1860 5 million—bringing in over $200 million
per year in exports
• A shift in the slave population

6. Southern Trade and Industry
• Industry and commerce was there, it just grew
slowly—most were associated with agriculture
and served the needs of the plantation
economy.
• Iron Works—Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond
• Flour mills
• Lumber mills

7. Problems and Reasons for slow growth
• Transportation—Mississippi River, few canals
and a smattering of rail lines
• Great profitability in cotton
• Only so much money to invest
• Southern climate less suitable for industrial
development
• Some said the Southerners just don’t work as
hard

8. A Special Way of Life
• Southerners thought of themselves as
Cavaliers—with a life based on chivalry, leisure
and elegance. Concerned more with “a refined
and gracious way of life”.
• Chivalry -courteous and considerate behavior
• Why might that be?

9. Colonial Economic Relationship
• “From the rattle with which the nurse tickles
the ear of the child born in the South to the
shroud that covers the cold form of the dead,
everything comes to us from the North.”
• Ak. Journalist Albert Pike
• The De Bow’s Review—editor wrote about the
southern economic dependency and warned
of the dangers

10. White Society in the South
• The Planter Class—Planter Asistocracy-20 slaves
or more-only ¼ of the white Southerners owned
slaves-of the 2 million white families in the South,
only 1 in 40, or 50,000were families of planters
• Very small minority—but dominated the political
landscape and social events—left a lasting image
of the South
• Like Medieval towns—a business community-
built elegant homes, entertained lavishly—
behaved very much like European nobility

11. The Southern Lady
• Many similarities between middle class
northern woman and the affluent white
southern woman—home centered, serving
needs of husband and children—no rights
• “The right to protection involved the
obligation to obey” --George Fitzhugh

12. Middle Class Women
• Lived on farms, isolated from people outside
from families, less likely to have access to
education—1/4 of all white women over 20
were illiterate.
• The slave labor system had a mixed impact on
white women—spared them of labor but
threatened many relationships with their
husbands—infidelity

13. The Plain Folk
• These were the typical white southerners—no
slaves, small farms, no education—over half of
the country’s total illiterate population came
from the South.
• Though they were deferential to the Planter
class—tied to the system—access to cotton
gins, markets, financial assistance, kinfolk,

14. The Hill People
• Some people did resist the social system of
the South—the Hill people of the Appalachian
ranges east of the Mississippi—slavery was
unattractive—it threatened their sense of
their own independence—
nationalistic, personal freedom,

15. Lowest Class of Whites(Trash)
• White trash or Crackers owned no land, worked
at odd jobs, hunted for food, suffered from
diseases—so poor and so little strength to
protest—ate clay—worse off than the slaves who
looked down on them.
• And yet they did not look down on the social
order—the hope and dream of one day they
could own slaves, the pecking order—at least
they were white
• The one thing that unified all classes together in
the South was the perception of race

16. The Peculiar Institution
• Only existed in US, Brazil, Cuba and Puerto
Rico
• Isolated the South from other northern
states—as isolation increased so did the
committed to defend it

17. • Within the South itself, the institution of
slavery had paradoxical results—
• Separated yet joined together—dependent on
each other for survival
• The institution was established and regulated
by law with Masters having all the power and
slaves powerless
• A huge body of laws that governed the slaves:
Slave Codes

18. No Typical Slave Style
• Enforcement was spotty until Nat Turner
• Even with slave codes in place, some slaves
did acquire property, learn to read,
marry…some lived in strict rigid condition,
other given more latitude

19. • Life under Slavery Page 383
• Slavery in the Cities—slaves worked on
contracts, hired out by masters, not
supervised very much
• Freed African Americans—about 250,000 in
the South by 1860
• Slave Trade—deplorable, banned in 1808 but
smuggling occurred
• Slave Resistance

20. Culture of Slavery
• Resistance was only part of the slave response
to slavery—another was an elaborate process
of adaptation—they developed their own
unique culture with which they could sustain a
sense of racial pride and unity.

21. Language and Music
Pidgen-mixture of African words and English--
Words like bogus, phony, gumbo, funky
Cuisine—deep fat frying, gumbos,
Music-yodeling, spirituals, the use of falsettos,
the “call and response” pattern in sermons—
music also served as a means of
communication, jazz, the use of drums and
the banjo

22. Religion
• Although a separate slave religion was not
suppose to exist, all were mainly Christians
with a mixture of African or West Indies
influences—ex. Voodoo
• Af. Am. Religion was more
emotional, emphasized the dream of freedom
and deliverance

23. Slave Family
• Despite certain legal restrictions a “nuclear
family” consistently emerged among slaves. They
operated differently—black women began child
bearing at a younger age, family ties were no less
strong than those of whites. Extended families
were distinctive characteristics of the black family
and were “adopted” kinship
• http://youtu.be/pDukq8npXBk
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