The document summarizes the rise of cotton as the dominant crop in the antebellum South between 1800-1860. Enslaved people were forced to pick large amounts of cotton under brutal conditions to fuel the cotton economy. The domestic slave trade expanded greatly to meet labor demands of the growing cotton industry. Southern states passed slave codes that severely restricted the lives of enslaved people and free blacks. Despite their harsh treatment, revolts by enslaved people were rare though significant ones occurred in Louisiana and Virginia. The cotton economy enriched large slaveholders but most southern whites did not own slaves and many lived in poverty.

1. HIST 2111
Chapter 12: Cotton is King: The
Antebellum South, 1800-1860

2. Context
• 1789-1860: 9 new slave-holding states joined the Union
• Commercial centers like New Orleans boomed
• Most whites did not own enslaved peoples, However, the
slaveholding planters exercised power and influence far in
excess of their numbers in the South and in the nation
• Slavery shaped the culture and society of the South
• Antebellum: years before the Civil War:
• Cotton emerged as a major commercial crop, eclipsing
tobacco, rice, and sugar
• 1860: the South produced 2/3s of the world’s cotton
• Cotton gin made it easier and faster to produce cotton

3. King Cotton
• Cultivation of short-staple cotton:
• Hardier and coarser and could grow in a
variety of climates and soil
• Britain’s demand for cotton increased rapidly
• South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi,
northern Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas

4. King Cotton
• Enslaved men, women, and children had to pick cotton
• ‘Drivers’ used the lash to make them work as fast as possible
• Planters expected a good “hand” (enslaved person) to work 100
acres of land and pick 200 pounds of cotton a day
• An overseer or master measured each enslaved person’s daily yield
• Enslaved peoples worked from sunrise to sunset, with a 10-minute
break for lunch – many owners gave them little to eat because they
did not want to cut into their profits
• Some owners knew that feeding enslaved peoples could increase
productivity and thus, provided more food
• After the cotton was picked, animals and other chores had to be
tended to
• The Mississippi River was the primary water highway – steamboats
were a vital component of the Cotton Kingdom

5. The Domestic Trade of Enslaved
Peoples
• The South depended on cotton and on enslaved peoples to harvest it:
• Slavery formed the very foundation of the country’s economic success
• 1807, Congress abolished the foreign trade of enslaved peoples – it went
into effect on January 1, 1808
• But, smuggling of enslaved peoples from Africa continued
• The end of the international trade meant that domestic enslaved peoples
were in very high demand
• Some states focused on growing wheat, which required less enslaved
peoples, so, there was a surplus:
• Some enslaved peoples were freed, but most were sold – Virginia and
Maryland took the lead in the domestic trade of enslaved peoples: trading
within the borders of the U.S.
• This made many Southern men wealthy, and auctions of enslaved peoples
occurred daily

6. The South in the American and World
Markets
• The nonfarm commercial sector was limited and mostly
served the needs of the plantation economy
• The South had an inadequate transportation system:
• Few canals, crude roads
• The South was more dependent upon manufacturers,
merchants, and professionals of the North
• This concerned some, including James D. B. De Bow of
New Orleans. In his magazine, he called for commercial
expansion and economic independence from the North

7. Life as an Enslaved Person
• Paternalism: the premise that southern white slaveholders acted in the best
interest of their enslaved peoples – feeding, clothing, disciplining them, and
bringing them Christianity – this was used to justify slavery
• Most enslaved peoples resisted (rebellions were rare)– going along with racial
stereotypes, breaking or losing tools, performing jobs improperly, stealing, or
refusing to work hard.
• Masters viewed them as childlike and thought ‘accidents’ occurred instead of
deliberate sabotage of tools, etc.
• Some slowly poisoned masters
• Some reported rebellious enslaved peoples to their masters, hoping to gain
preferential treatment – they could usually expect gratitude and sometimes more
lenient treatment
• Slaveholders used psychological coercion and physical violence to prevent
enslaved peoples from disobeying them
• A form of discipline was to sell enslaved peoples – beatings sometimes left them
unable to work or dead
• Other forms of discipline involved neck braces, balls and chains, leg irons, and
paddles with holes

8. Life as an Enslaved Person
• Southern slave codes: enslaved peoples could not hold property, leave
masters’ premises without permission, be out after dark, congregate with
other enslaved peoples (except at church), carry firearms, testify in court
against whites, or strike a white person
• Codes also prevented whites from teaching enslaved peoples to read or
write
• No provisions to legalize their marriages or divorces – some masters did
allow marriages to promote the birth of children and foster harmony
• Some masters also forced enslaved peoples to form unions – hoping for
more children to use
• Some allowed enslaved peoples to choose their own partners, but they
could also veto that choice
• Couples faced the fear of being sold away from each other, as well as
losing their children
• Parents taught their children to be discreet, submissive, and guarded

9. Life as an Enslaved Person
• They also taught them with stories – tales of
tricksters, sly enslaved peoples, or animals like
Brer Rabbit. Songs often featured double
meanings.
• African beliefs – ideas about the spiritual
world and the importance of healers survived
in the South
• Most Southerners called these practices
witchcraft

10. The Free Black Population
• 261,000 free African Americans lived in slaveholding states
– ½ living in Maryland, Delaware, North Carolina, Virginia,
and later Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, and the District of
Columbia
• Some had earned money and bought their freedom
• Some masters let enslaved peoples buy their freedom and
others let their enslaved peoples go for moral reasons
(manumission) but this became increasingly difficult to do
• New Orleans, Natchez, and Charleston had thriving free
Black communities
• A majority of free Blacks were lighter-skinned women,
which reflected the interracial unions that formed between
white men and Black women

11. The Free Black Population
• Both whites and those with African ancestry tended to delineate
varying degrees of lightness in skin color in a social hierarchy
• Historical terms below:
• Mulattos: those with one Black parent and one white parent
• Quadroons: those with one Black grandparent
• Octoroons: those with one Black great-grandparent
• Those with lighter skin often looked down on their darker
counterparts
• A few free African Americans were wealthy and owned enslaved
peoples (usually family members) to help emancipate them
• In the early nineteenth century, manumission became illegal
• Southern states also made laws to deprive free Blacks of their
rights, such as the right to testify in court against whites

12. Revolts
• While revolts were rare, at least 2 major rebellions occurred in the
South:
• January 1811: sugar parishes in Louisiana – inspired by the Haitian
Revolution:
• As many as 500 enslaved peoples joined the rebellion led by Charles
Deslondes, a mixed-race “driver” of enslaved peoples
• The master’s son was killed (the master escaped). A posse
mobilized to stop the rebellion, but not before they set fire to three
plantations and killed numerous whites
• A small force led by Manuel Andry (the master) captured
Deslondes, executed him, and then mutilated and burned his body.
• Other rebels were beheaded, with their heads being displayed on
pikes along the Mississippi River

13. Revolts
• In 1831, Nat Turner (an enslaved preacher
whose wife had been sold away) led a band of
armed enslaved peoples from house to house
in Southampton County, Virginia, killing 60
whites
• Turner felt he should lay down his life to end
slavery
• His rebellion was overpowered by state and
federal troops. More than 100 were executed.

14. Markets of Enslaved Peoples
• Illegal trade of enslaved peoples from Florida through Texas, as well
as Cuba
• Most enslaved peoples came from states in the Upper South -sold
to states in the Lower South
• Many masters routinely raped female enslaved peoples
• Sometimes masters had to sell their children because their wives
despised their husband’s children with enslaved women (reminder
of infidelity)
• Selling enslaved peoples was a key part of the economy in the
South
• Cotton production boomed in the Deep South and settlers came by
the thousands:
• Many enslaved peoples were moved to this region (“the second
middle passage”) and left their families broken up and scattered

15. Slavery and the White Class Structure
• Wealth was unequally distributed in the South
• the planter aristocracy exercised significant
power
• Compared to the old aristocracies of England and
Europe, but this was not a sound comparison:
• Most of them were first-generation settlers as
late as the 1850s
• Planters were competitive capitalists, and many
lived rather modestly.
• Some tended to move frequently

16. Slavery and the White Class Structure
• Edward Lloyd V of Talbot County, Maryland:
• An owner of Frederick Douglass
• Underfed and brutalized his population of enslaved peoples
• Lloyd was governor of Maryland (1809-1811), member of
the House of Representatives (1897-1809), and senator
(1819-1826)
• He and others like him helped shape foreign and domestic
policy with one goal in view: expand the power and reach
of the cotton kingdom
• Under them were yeoman farmers or small landowners
• Below them were poor, landless whites (majority)

17. Slavery and the White Class Structure
• Some non-slaveowning whites did oppose the planter elite (usually the ‘hill
people’) of Appalachia and the Ozarks
• Many non-slaveowning whites lived amid the plantation system:
• They received access to cotton gins, markets for their modest crops and their
livestock, and credit or other financial assistance in their times of need
• Some white southerners were known as “crackers,” “sand hillers,” or “poor white
trash” and lived in genuine squalor, owning no land and supported themselves by
foraging and hunting. Some were common laborers.
• Dietary deficiencies and disease caused them to suffer from pellagra, hookworm,
and malaria. Sometimes they were so hungry they ate clay. But most of them did
not oppose the plantation system.
• The single greatest unifying factor among most of the southern white population
was their perception of race -- felt a bond with their fellow whites and a sense of
racial supremacy.
• Non-slaveholding whites typically served on juries and voted, and served on
neighborhood patrols to prevent enslaved peoples from escaping, etc.

18. Slavery and the White Class Structure
• 7 of the first 11 presidents owned enslaved
peoples
• More than ½ of the Supreme Court justices who
served on the court from its inception to the Civil
War were from slaveholding states
• The South wanted limited government – did not
want taxes for canals, railroads, etc.
• Also feared the federal government would
tamper with enslavement
• Some historians consider the antebellum
plantation system a ‘pre-capitalist’ system

19. Honor in the South
• Sustained the image of aristocrats in many
ways:
• elaborate code of ‘chivalry’ in which Southern
men were obliged to defend their ‘honor’ --
often through dueling (dueling had largely
disappeared in the North).
• They avoided ‘coarse’ occupations like trade
and commerce, and those who did not
become planters usually joined the military

20. Gender and the Southern Household
• The Southern lady: lives were generally centered in the home,
serving as companions and hostesses for their husbands and as
nurturing mothers for their children
• “Genteel” southern white women seldom engaged in public
activities or found income-producing employment
• A cult of honor dictated that southern white men give particular
importance to the defense of women
• Some women engaged in spinning, weaving, and other production
for the economic life of the family. This was usually done on smaller
plantations.
• Southern white women often had less education than women in
the north and they were usually trained to be suitable wives
• Enslaved women were not regarded in the same fashion as
Southern white women regarding honor, etc.

21. Defending Slavery
• During the tariff incident, John Calhoun had argued that states had
the right to nullify federal laws – “state’s rights” argument
• Abolitionists were small, but vocal group of northerners
• In response, white southerners put forth arguments in defense of
slavery – Calhoun, etc.
• Calhoun advanced the idea of a concurrent majority – a majority of
a separate region that would otherwise be in the minority of the
nation with the power to veto or disallow legislation put forward by
a hostile majority – his 1850 essay: “Disquisition on Government” –
government was necessary to ensure the preservation of society
since society existed to ‘protect our race’ and if government grew
hostile to society, then a concurrent majority had to take action,
including the formation of a new government (anti-democratic
argument)

22. Defending Slavery
• Southerners critiqued wage labor in the North:
• Argued that the Industrial Revolution brought about “wage
slavery”
• Personal attacks against abolitionists like William Lloyd
Garrison
• George Fitzhugh defended slavery by writing a book called
Sociology for the South, or the Failure of Free Society.
• In it, he argued that laissez-faire capitalism benefitted only
the quick-witted and intelligent leaving the ignorant at a
huge disadvantage. According to him, the owners of
enslaved peoples provided care for them - from birth to
death, unlike wage slavery of the North. He described
enslaved peoples as ‘grown up children.’

23. Defending Slavery
• There were also defenders of slavery in the
North:
• Harvard professor Louis Agassiz, popularized
polygenism: the idea that different human races
came from separate origins – no single human
family origin existed
• His idea became widely popular in the 1850s with
the publication of George Gliddon and Josiah
Nott’s Types of Mankind and other books.

24. The Filibuster and the Quest for New
Slave States
• Southern imperialists wanted to create an empire of slavery
• They used filibusters: men who led unofficial military
operations to seize land from foreign countries or foment
revolution there
• An 1818 federal law made it a crime to do this,
nonetheless, it continued
• Slaveholders looked south to the Caribbean, Mexico, and
Central America
• Spanish Cuba became a goal; some wanted to annex it to
prevent it from becoming like Haiti – a Black republic
• Americans also worried about the British wanting Cuba and
since it had outlawed slavery in 1833, Blacks in Cuba would
be free

25. The Filibuster and the Quest for New
Slave States
• Narciso Lopez was a Venezuelan who wanted to
end Spanish control of the island, and he gained
American support
• He tried to take it over 5 times, the last in 1851,
leading an armed group from New Orleans
• He was unsuccessful and was captured by the
Spanish and executed, along with American
filibusters
• President Pierce also tried to take Cuba

26. The Filibuster and the Quest for New
Slave States
• Ostend Manifesto: a secret document written by American
diplomats in 1854 at Ostend, Belgium. The manifesto outlined a
plan for the United States Government to acquire the island of Cuba
from Spain.
• The diplomats, Pierre Soule, James Mason, and James Buchanan,
were all staunch advocates of slavery and expansion. They
threatened to obtain Cuba by force if Spain refused to sell the island
for $120 million.
• When word of the manifesto leaked, it created a great controversy
in the northern states. Because the diplomats were well-known
advocates of slavery, Northern politicians and abolitionists
expressed outrage and decried the manifesto as an attempt to
extend slavery.
• Later, President Buchanan declared that filibustering was the action
of “pirates”

27. The Filibuster and the Quest for New
Slave States
• William Walker of Tennessee conquered
Nicaragua in 1855
• The following year, he made slavery legal there
and reopened the trade of enslaved peoples
• He was also elected president of Nicaragua
• In 1857, he was chased from the country.
• He returned to Central America in 1860, and was
captured by the British who released him to
Honduran authorities, who executed him via
firing squad