The document summarizes aspects of life in the Old South from 1790 to 1850, including: 1) The economies of the Chesapeake region and Lowcountry relied heavily on tobacco and rice production using slave labor. 2) The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 and the rise of short-staple cotton expanded slavery throughout the Deep South as cotton became highly profitable. 3) While some Southern whites owned small farms or no slaves, the plantation system dominated the economy, and the number of slaves owned was a major status symbol for wealthy planters.

1. Chapter 9
The Old South,
1790-1850
Web

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

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

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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 and
Santeria-also known as La Religión, Regla de Ocha, La Regla
Lucumí or Lukumi, is a syncretic religion of West African and
Caribbean origin influenced by and syncretized with Roman
Catholicism. Its liturgical language, a dialect of Yorùbá, is also
known as Lucumí.)
• Gave slaves sense of themselves as a historical people

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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.