Natchez-Under-The-Hill
o A tax of $10 per flatboat, designed to rid the wharf district of Natchez-Under-the-Hill in Mississippi of poor flatboatmen, causes protests from those whose cargoes were confiscated for being unable to pay the tax. The militia is called up and disperses the protest.
o Europeans did not settle Natchez land until 1720, when the French established the port Fort Rosalie and destroyed the Natchez, the fort becoming a major trading site on the Mississippi.
o The Spanish took control of Fort Rosalie in 1763, moved the town up a bluff away from floodwaters, and renamed the port Natchez-Under-the-Hill. It was taken by the Americans in 1798.
o The port became known as the last stop before New Orleans and was a site of racial intermingling, ‘
o The town of Natchez became home to planter aristocrats, whose livelihoods were sustained by slavery. They were wary of the multiracial Under-the-Hill, and in November 1837 issued a threat to the “gamblers, pimps, and whores” twenty-four hours to evacuate.
o Under-the-Hill, with its racial and social mixing, threatened the slave-owner’s system of control that relied on control and clear distinctions between free whites and enslaved blacks.
King Cotton and Southern Expansion
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- Slavery waned in the early days of independence, but returned with the rise of cotton and expanded from the original states of Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia to include Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Florida, and Texas.
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Cotton and Expansion into the Old Southwest
- The cotton gin, invented by Eli Whitney and Catherine Greene, automated the task of removing the seeds from cotton, allowing for more cotton growing.
- Cotton expansion led planters to migrate to the black belt, a fertile area stretching from western Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. This was called Alabama Fever.
- Southwest expansion displaced Indian populations, beginning with the defeat of the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend in 1814 and ending with the Cherokee Trail of Tears in 1838, forcing the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creeks, and Seminoles to move to the Indian Territory.
- The cotton expansion reached into Louisiana and Texas.
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Slavery the Mainspring—Again
- The export of cotton and the southern slave trade provided the capital for northern industrial development.
- The Industrial Revolution, a period of social and technological advance that began in Britain, created the demand for cotton in their new factories. Cotton represented 60% of American exports.
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A Slave Society in a Changing World
- Though attitudes were forming against slavery, the cotton expansion led to a greater demand for slaves, leading to the view that slavery was an economic necessity.
- Though cotton was not the only crop, cotton’s profitability led it to inform every aspect of life in the South.
- The South became a slave society, extending the master servant model into all relationships.
- Though the North was becoming increasingly urban, the South remained largely rural, due to the diversion of resources and energy to the plantations.
- Southern capital was tied up in land and slaves, investors unwilling to look at risky railroads, canals, and factories and wary of introducing wage labor to a slave society.
- Slave states were losing political influence due to lower population growth rates than the North, leading to the Nullification Crisis.
To Be a Slave
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Cotton and the American Slave System
- 55% of slaves worked on cotton; 20% to produce tobacco (10%), rice, sugar, hemp; 15 were domestic servants; 10% in mining, lumber, and construction.
- Cotton growing concentrated slaves on plantations rather than on small farms. 75% of slaves lived in groups of ten or more. Southern plantations fueled the development of African slave communities, but Westward expansion destabilized them by fueling the internal slave trade.
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The Internal Slave Trade
- Plantation owners in the Upper South sold their slaves to the new cotton growing regions of the Old Southwest. Between 1820 to 1960, 50 percent of Upper North slaves participated in Southern expansion and another million were uprooted due to the internal trade.
- Slaves were gathered in “slave pens” such as Richmond and Charleston before being moved South; in the interior, slaves were carried by boat down the Mississippi, hence the phrase “sold down the river.” Slaves moved on foot in chained “coffles” before being sold at auction.
- Slave traders were often respected members of the community and the size of the slave trade made a mockery of claims of Southern benevolence.
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Sold “Down the River”
- Migration to the Southwest separated individual slaves from their families, creating a second Middle Passage.
- Upper South planters sold their slaves to trading firms, who held them in slave pens until the weather cooled and marched them South before being sold at auction. Slaves were frequently stripped to be inspected by potential buyers, and families were often torn apart at auctions.
- Slaves who found themselves in frontier conditions or on mixed farms were often highly self-reliant, but plantations enforced uniformity. Slaves fought for the few comforts they had, such as being able to supplement their owner-provided diets with gardens and hunting.
- Opportunity for owners in the Southwest translated to servitude for slaves, which bred a constant fear of slave revolt in their white owners.
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Field Work and the Gang System of Labor
- 75% of all slaves were field workers, who were most affected by the gang system of labor on cotton plantations. Slaves were organized into groups of 20-25 in a communal work system similar to parts of Africa, but with overseers. Slaves worked from sun up to sun down.
- A hardworking slave was worth at least $1000, due to the difficulty of the work.
- Elderly slaves took on other tasks in the community and were tolerated by owners. However, when slavery neared an end in the 1860s, owners evicted their elderly slaves, a violation of their own code of paternalism
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House Servants
- Initially, almost all slaves were fieldworkers, but growing profits led owners to divert some to house servants to support their lifestyles.
- House slaves worked less, were often better dressed and fed, and had access to information from owners who spoke freely in the presence of servants.
- House slaves eagerly left during the Civil War, including those of Confederate President James Davis.
- House slaves were constantly under the supervision of their owners and had to work for the whims of their masters with a constant ingratiating attitude.
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Artisans and Skilled Workers
- Small numbers of slaves were skilled workers (men more than women, due to traditional gender roles). They worked as lumberjacks, miners, deckhands and stokers, and workers on Southern factories. Masters gained their parole.
- As the South failed to attract immigrants, both free and slave blacks were given the chance to hold skilled occupations denied to them in the North.
The African American Community
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- Despite living in close contact with their oppressors, slaves created an influential and vibrant culture.
- Half of all slaves lived on plantations with twenty or more slaves and other slaves had connections to neighboring farms. Urban slaves made many secret contacts in the cities.
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The Price of Survival
- The South was the only slave society to grow through natural growth rather than through importation.
- Slavery increased through high fertility rates, though this was affected by the harshness of slave life.
- Mortality rates for children under five were twice those of their white counterparts, due to their mothers’ living conditions or work. Owners accused their slaves of smothering their children to death.
- Malaria, yellow fever, and cholera were endemic in the South. Health remained a concern for both white and black people.
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From Cradle to Grave
- Owners claimed that by housing, feeding, and clothing slaves those slaves they were more humane than their Northern counterparts.
- Children lived with their parents, who cooperated to raise their children and teach them survival skills, and witnessed the harshness of slavery from an early age.
- Most slaves worked as field hands, working under a white overseer, but also as skilled workers and house servants. Children were expected to take care of younger children, and schooling was nonexistent.
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Slave Families
- No Southern state recognized slave marriages, but they were encouraged by masters for the purpose of procreation and slave submission. Even so, they served as the basis of slave communities.
- Parents sought to teach their children a kinship network to maintain continuity.
- Fear of separation was constant due to the internal slave trade. One in five marriages were broken and one in three children sold away from their families.
- Slaves acted as each other’s family, allowing for kinships networks anywhere slaves were sold.
- Families also served as a way to reject white paternalism in favor of African American values and relationships.
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African American Religion
- African religious tradition mixed with Christianity into a distinctive faith that expressed resistance to slavery.
- The Second Great Awakening caused a rapid increase of Christianity among black slaves and free African Americans started their own independent churches.
- Owners allowed their slaves to practice Christianity in an attempt to make them docile, which slaves were quick to notice.
- Christianity was not a religion of rebellion, but of enabling and surviving.
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Freedom and Resistance
- Slaves sometimes attempted to escape from plantations, such as in the case of Harriet Tubman, who later returned to the South to rescue 60-70 others. Most escapees were young men, as all others often had responsibilities that kept them on farms.
- More often was “running away nearby,” when a slave would escape to nearby forests and swamps before returning, signaling their discontent with slavery.
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Slave Revolts
- Slave preacher Nat Turner, inspired by a religious vision, led five other slaves in a revolt against their master and fifty-five other white people on 20 August 1831. The revolt grew to sixty slaves the next morning.
- The Revolt dispersed after the group came against armed white men, leading to forty of the slaves to be executed, including Nat Turner, captured by accident two months after the revolt hiding in a forest near his old plantation.
- Gabriel’s Rebellion, Denmark Vasey’s plot, and Nat Turner’s Revolt were prominent examples from a string of organized slave resistances, which shook Southern claims of benevolence and could only be held down through force.
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Free African Americans
- In 1860, 250,000 free black people lived in the South, which came from the early years after the American Revolution. After the cotton boom of the early 1800s, freedom became gradually harder, and soon became impossible by 1830.
- Most freedmen lived in the Upper South countryside working as tenant farmers and laborers, but urban slaves were more visible. Women could only find menial work, though men were able to gain skilled labor despite discrimination.
- The black codes, laws concerning free blacks in the South, denied free blacks most of their civil liberties. The existence of free black men and women threatened the entire Southern slave system and had to be suppressed. \
The White Majority
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The Middle Class
- In the rural south, cities provided homes for the commercial class the agricultural economy depended on to sell its products on the world market. Urban growth was limited to cities that were major shipping centers, which looked much like Northern cities with formal educational institutions, textile mills, and heavier industry.
- William Gregg attempted to establish a cotton textile mill to diversify the southern economy and attract poor whites who could not find work in agriculture, but he faced difficulty getting a charter from the planter-dominated South Carolina legislature and his pro-tariff stance put him at odds with most South Carolinians.
- Joseph Anderson used slave labor in the mills, proving slaves were capable of factory work.
- Many planters scorned the commercial class because they were dependent on their suppliers and customers, in contrast to the North, who valued their business acumen.
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Poor White People
- Thirty to 50 percent of all southern whites were landless, similar to the proportion in the north. However, slavery limited their employment opportunities in the agricultural south, and many were harvest farmers or tenant farmers, trying to become independent.
- Poor whites and blacks intermingled in their work, socially, and sexually. White people engaged in supplying slaves with prohibited goods such as liquor, helping escapes, planning revolt. However, poor whites insisted on their racial superiority. Many slaves, better dressed and fed, dismissed them as “poor white trash.” The lives of poor whites blurred racial distinctions with supposedly inferior black slaves and were a threat to the system of slavery.
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Yeoman Values
- Yeoman, a British term for a farmer who works his own land, was applied to independent Southern farmers who sometimes owned a few slaves, but generally worked their own land. This land ranged from adequate to poor, and was enough to feed themselves and their families and grow enough cotton a year to make some cash. Sixty percent owned their own farms.
- Community was paramount in yeoman life. Men and women depended on their relatives and neighbors for assistance in large farm tasks and repaid them for their help through complex systems of barter. This was similar to northern communities, except for slave labor, which was frequently loaned out to other farmers.
- Yeoman and slave owners lived side by side. Slavery provided a link between the rich and middle class, larger planters buying goods from smaller planters; slave owners dominated these communities.
- In 1828 and 1832, poor white and yeomen voted overwhelmingly for Andrew Jackson, drawn to his expansionism, populism, and rags-to-riches ascent from poor boy to slave owner. The yeomen who hoped to join the slave owners supported their dominance.
- Yeomen farmers in the upcountry valued their independence, based on their patriarchal values and southern “plain folk” lifestyle. They opposed capitalism and industrialization, seeing it as encroachments on freedom.
- The freedom yeomen valued was based on slavery. Whites could count on slaves to do the hardest labor, making all whites equal in the sense they were all “free.” Universal white male suffrage and democratization strengthened belief in white skin privilege, even though the gap between rich and poor was increasing.
Planters
· Small Slave Owners
o The largest group of slave owners were yeomen farmers who tried to make the switch from subsistence farming to commercial production, which require slaves. However, gaining capital for more slaves was difficult. Yeomen often used slaves for farm work while they worked another job, worked with the slaves in the field, or hired out their slaves to other planters.
o The owner was economically vulnerable: a drop in cotton prices or poor crop could force an owner to sell his slaves. This began again when good times returned, but the roller-coaster economy and the Panic of 1837 sharply limited upward mobility.
o Middle-class professionals—lawyers, doctors, merchants—became large slave owners because they had capital (their pay) to invest in land and slaves. These men owned skilled slaves and rented them out. They slowly made their way into the slave-owning elite and confirmed their position by marrying their children into the aristocracy.
· The Planter Elite
o The 2.5 percent who owned fifty slaves or more enjoyed prestige, political leadership, and a lifestyle many envied. Most inherited their wealth. Planters learned how to appeal to the popular vote, as smaller slave owners made up the clear majority in state legislatures.
o The eastern seaboard had given rise to a class of rich planters in the colonial period, ranging from land-rich to labor-poor planters like Thomas Chaplin to rich planters like Nathaniel Heyward who, through wealthy marriages and land purchases, amassed 45,000 acres and over 2,000 slaves.
o As slave owning spread westward, membership in the elite grew to include the new wealth of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. The rich planters of the Natchez community were popularly called “nabobs” (from a Hindi word for wealthy Europeans in India).
o Natchez, the richest county in the nation in 1850, fostered an elite lifestyle of new money rather than tradition.
· Plantation Life
o Wealthy planters lived in isolation with their families and slaves. Family networks, boarding schools, politics, and frequent visiting modeled the English aristocracy as understood by Southerners. Men were expected to be masculine and women feminine.
o Slaves had to be forced to support this system. Plantations aimed to be self-sufficient, which required many hands and extensive management, often taking direct financial control or exercising power over their subordinates.
o The planters developed paternalism to justify slavery by portraying the plantation as a family, with the master as the head and the mistress as the “helpmate.” Planters imagined this to be a benevolent system, and expected gratitude from their slaves.
· The Plantation Mistress
o Paternalism force plantation mistresses into positions of responsibility but no authority.
o Mistresses spent their lives “tending” family members, including slaves, and supervising daily tasks such as sewing, cooking, etc. She was also expected to act as hostess.
o Husbands controlled the plantation—if a wife challenged the paternalistic system, why shouldn’t slaves?
o Plantation wives “suffered” from isolation from friends and family because of their responsibilities. Husbands traveled extensively for politics and business.
o Though some southern women railed against “the curse of slavery,” they referred to their own responsibilities rather than slavery itself, and few white women understood the suffering of their slaves.
· Coercion and Violence
o Most slave owners believed that force was necessary to make slaves work.
o Slave owners often sexually abused their female slaves, violating both law and their own paternalism. Sometimes, relationships formed (such as in the case of TJ and Sally Hemings), but most slave women had little hope of escaping the abuse.
o Masters rarely acknowledged their illegitimate children and mistresses were silent based on their subordinate position in society.
o Plantation owners held absolute power, often abusing it. The credit for saving humanity belongs not to white paternalism but to African Americans and their communities.
The Defense of Slavery
· Developing Proslavery Arguments
o The South developed justifications for slavery based on the Bible and the histories of Greece and Rome. They also used a legal argument, that the Constitution recognized slavery, which it did, due to the compromises made at the Convention.
o Denmark Vesey’s conspiracy, occurring two years after the Missouri Crisis of 1819-20, alarmed Southerners to anti-slavery talk. Legislation jailed black seamen as they came into the Charleston, Charlestonians believing they were spreading antislavery.
o Nat Turner’s rebellion was blamed on “Yankee peddlers and traders” with antislavery opinions. The South’s attitude, which the North viewed as paranoid, was based on the idea that anything that challenged the master-slave relationship was a threat to the entire system.
· After Nat Turner
o The South closed ranks on slavery, due to Nat Turner’s rebellion, the publication of William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator newspaper in 1831, the emancipation of British West Indian slaves in 1834 (too close to home for most Southerners), and the 1831 Nullification Crisis. Southerner’s felt that the federal government had no right to interfere with their states’ rights (slavery) and militantly defended them.
o The South rejected antislavery propaganda and began passing legislation to ban teaching slaves how to read or write to limit the effect of propaganda, restricted gatherings or social activity without whites present, made insurrection a capital offense, and limited the rights of free blacks.
o The South introduced a “gag rule” in Washington to limit debate on slavery and pressured dissenters to remain silent or leave. Christian ministers received the greatest pressure to conform, who preached obedience as a way to make slavery humane.
o The South fueled fears of a pro-slave South surrounded by anti-slave states and riots by freed black slaves.
o The South moved beyond defensiveness to promote slavery as a benevolent institution and a necessity. They contrasted Southern slavery with Northern wage slavery, saying slavery was bound by “a community of interests” compared to Northern selfishness.
· Changes in the South
o It became more difficult to become a slaveowner as the price of owning a slave rose. Slaveowning decreased from 36% to 25% from 1830 to 1860. Slaves were increasingly sold from the Upper South to the Lower South, showing regional differences as the Upper South economy began to diversify.
o Slavery decreased in southern cities. Urban slaves often had daily contact with poor whites and freedmen, and often were hired out or hired themselves out, making their labor indistinguishable from Northern “free labor.” Planters viewed the cities with suspicion.
o Increased commercialization of agriculture (causing rising land prices) made it difficult for poor whites to own land. Yeomen, exposed to the market economy by expanding railroads, worried that banks, railroads, and activist state governments would threaten their independence.
o Hinton Helper published The Impending Crisis in 1857, attacking slavery, and indicated the growing tensions between the haves and the have-nots in the South.
o Despite the changes, the South remained fixed in its defense of slavery, ending debate on alternative labor systems and stifling national cooperation.
1. In the years following the American Revolution:
c. large scale cotton production and the slave system on which it depended made the South quite different from the North.
“a” is not correct since slavery began long before the Revolution.
“b” is not correct as the slave system was growing stronger even before the Purchase.
“d” is not correct as it is a blanket statement, but it is partially correct (see Missouri Compromise).
“e” is not correct as Southern farmers did support slavery, despite not being wealthy themselves
2. A crucial element in the rapid growth of cotton production between 1790 and mid 1840:
b. was the development of the mechanical reaper to harvest the valuable crop. (Supposedly, but the cotton gin isn’t a reaper, but the other answers just don’t fit.)
“a” is not correct as textile mills were concentrated in the North and overseas in Britain
“c” is not correct as cotton was expanding long before Texas.
“d” could be correct, if we count the gin as a “new farming technique”
“e” could also be correct, as the Industrial Revolution in Britain opened a market for Southern cotton
3. As a result of large-scale cotton production in the South:
a. capital in the region was concentrated in land and slaves.
“b” is not correct as the Southern elite continually concentrated land and slaves into their hands.
“c” is not correct as the use of slave labor discouraged innovation
“d” is not correct for the same reason as b.
“e” is not correct for the same reason as c.
4. In the cotton-producing South:
e. a viable but often vulnerable African-American community developed
“a” is not correct as the rise of cotton concentrated slaves into groups of ten or more on plantations.
“b” is not correct as Ohio was a free state
“c” is not correct as only a small number of elite families owned many slaves.
“d” is not correct as the slave trade officially ended in the states on January 1, 1808.
5. The organization of slave labor on large plantations came to be known as:
b. the gang system.
6. Within the slaves’ world:
d. a diversity of occupations and circumstances developed
“a” is not correct as slaves were often separated into skilled, house, and field slaves.
“b” is not correct as labor roles often mixed.
“c” is not correct as house slaves often had contact with other whites.
“e” is not correct as children were taken as the property of the master.
7. One result of the slaves’ existence was:
d. the development of strong familial and non-kinship relationships.
“a” is not correct as it’s wrong.
“b” is partially correct, but not the point of the question.
“c” is not correct as slaves often took parts of white culture.
“e” is partially correct, but d is more correct.
8. Black Christianity was a religion that:
c. provided a sense of spiritual freedom that profoundly shaped slave culture.
“a” is not correct as Christianity first gained a foothold during the first Great Awakening and swept through the South in the Second Great Awakening of the 1790s.
“b” is not correct as it incorporated elements of African culture.
“d” is not correct as Black Christianity rejected those principles.
“e” is not correct as it did not preach militancy, but spiritual freedom and eventual salvation.
9. In the South during the years prior to 1850:
e. free African Americans experienced tremendous social and racial discrimination.
“a” is not correct as racial equality was not practiced in the Western territories.
“b” is not correct as some free blacks were employed in a wide range of occupations.
“c” is not correct as social equality simply didn’t happen.
“d” is not correct for the same reason as b.
10. From 1790 until the 1840s:
b. the largest group of slave owners were small independent farmers hoping to improve their economic circumstances.
“a” is not correct as 30-50 percent of white men were landless, with the rest having only small farms.
“c” is not correct as only 36% of white men owned slaves.
“d” is not correct as 75% of slaves lived in groups of ten or more.
“e” is not correct in that the relationship was reversed.
11. The ideology that Southerners developed to rationalize their treatment of slaves was:
b. paternalism.
12. One of the most striking things about the Southern slave system was:
a. just how compassionate most white people really were to slaves =D =D =D
No explanations. All objections are moot.
12. One of the most striking things about the Southern slave system was:
d. how much humanity survived despite the awful brutality of slavery.
“a” is not correct because we aren’t crazy stupid.
“b” is subjective. The book is just a little (read: the Klan is at work!) too apologetic.
“c” is not correct because, again, we’re not stupid.
“e” is not correct because TJ didn’t know how to keep his frock out of other frocks.
13. Beginning in the 1830s:
a. the defense of slavery became the overwhelming current in Southern Society.
14. As the United States approached the 1850s:
e. the South began a defense system to protect itself against Northern hostility to slavery.
