chapter 11 final

Southern Birth Rate

-20 percent higher than that of the nation as a whole -infant mortality in the region remained higher than elsewhere -nearly half the children born in the South in 1860 died before they reached five years of age --quality of water --lack of medication --insect bites and malaria --swampland : chlorea --no modern sanitation

Men and Wives

-Male slave owners had frequent sexual relationships with the female slaves on their plantations -the children of those unions became part of the plantation labor force and served as a constant reminder to white women of their husbands' infidelity -few southern white women rebelled against their roles and against the prevailing assumptions of their region -Most white women, however, found few outlets for whatever discontent they may have felt with their lives -enerally convinced themselves of the benefits of their position and—often even more fervently than southern white men—defended the special virtues of the southern way of life. -Upper-class white women in the South were particularly energetic in defending the class lines that separated them from poorer whites

Rise of Cotton King

-Much of the upper South continued in the nineteenth century to rely, as it always had, on the cultivation of tobacco → market for crop unstable - Tobacco prices were subject to frequent depressions, including a prolonged one that began in the 1820s and extended into the 1850s -Tobacco also rapidly exhausted the land on which it grew; it was difficult for most growers to remain in business in the same place for very long. -many farmers in the old tobacco-growing regions of Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina were shifting to other crops—notably wheat—while the center of tobacco cultivation was moving westward

Conditions on Farms for Slaves

-Some blacks lived in almost prisonlike conditions, rigidly and harshly controlled by their masters. -probably most) others enjoyed some flexibility and (at least in comparison to the regimen prescribed by law) a significant degree of autonomy. -The nature of the relationship between masters and slaves depended in part on the size of the plantation. - Although the majority of slave owners were small farmers, the majority of slaves lived on plantations of medium or large size, with sizable slave work forces -Substantial planters often hired overseers and even assistant overseers to represent them. "Head drivers," trusted and responsible slaves often assisted by several subdrivers, acted under the overseer as foremen -majority of slaveowners were small farmers, the majority of slaves lived on plantations of medium or large size, with sizable slave work forces

Rice Crop-

-South Carolina, Georgia, and parts of Florida -demanded substantial irrigation and needed an exceptionally long growing season (nine months) -cultivation of that staple remained restricted to a relatively small area

Sources of Southern Difference

-South made few serious efforts to build an economy that might challenge its dependency -region did so little to develop a larger industrial commercial economy because great profitability of the region's agricultural system, particularly of cotton production -the agricultural economy was booming, and ambitious people eager to profit from the emerging capitalist economy had little incentive to look beyond it -wealthy southerners had so much capital invested in their land and, particularly, their slaves that they had little left for other investments

Transportation and Internal Improvements

-South's inadequate transportation system; no investments in internal improvements -Canals were almost nonexistent; most roads were crude and unsuitable for heavy transport; and railroads, although they expanded substantially in the 1840s and 1850s, failed to tie the region together effectively -Most of the South, however, remained unconnected to the national railroad system (and in industry) -Most lines in the region were short and local. The principal means of transportation was water - Planters generally shipped their crops to market along rivers or by sea; most manufacturing was in or near port towns

Southern Family

-Their lives generally centered in the home, where they served as companions to and hostesses for their husbands and as nurturing mothers for their children. -white men were even more dominant and white women even more subordinate in southern culture than they were in the North -females limited access to public world -family principle economic unit on most lands -limited schooling

Southern Trade and Industry

-business class in south not important -there was growing activity in flour milling and in textile and iron manufacturing, particularly in the upper South -commercial sector served the needs of the plantation community -southern merchant-bankers thus became figures of considerable influence and importance in the region when cotton/economy was in decline -substantial groups of professional people in the South— lawyers, editors, doctors, and others. -were closely tied to and dependent on the plantation economy -relatively all unimportant

gang system

-employed on the cotton, sugar, and tobacco plantations -under which slaves were simply divided into groups -each of them directed by a driver -compelled to work for as many hours as the overseer considered a reasonable workday

Sugar Crop

-enjoyed a reasonably profitable market for their crop -sugar cultivation required intensive (and debilitating) labor and a long growing time -Only relatively wealthy planters could afford to engage in it, and they faced major competition from the great sugar plantations of the Caribbean

overseers

-had less of an economic stake in their well-being; -overseers were paid in proportion to the amount of work they could get out of the slaves they supervised. foreman, oversee the job -in charge person (discipline, closest to them ) -sometimes it was another slave; creates tension between slave group --> cannot form uprising → they are angry at each other -house slaves vs. field hands ; mining jobs, dock workers -easier to get away

Slavery "The Peculiar Institution"

-it was special -commitment to slavery/owning slaves isolated south from rest of society -it isolated blacks from whites, drawing a sharp and inviolable racial line dividing one group of southerners from another -African Americans under slavery began to develop a society and culture of their own, one in many ways unrelated to the white civilization around them -created unique bond between blacks and whites (masters and slaves) -each group influenced by, indeed depend on, the other -institution established and regulated in detail by law

agriculture

-main crop is tobacco -planters started to grow wheat instead of tobacco -georgia and two carolinas growing rice -the gulf coast was growing sugar but experienced competition from the Caribbean -cotton is the new product that comes in --advantage: strong material, didn't matter what the soil was it grew well -cotton was their primary export

slave codes

-prohibited whites from teaching slaves to read or write -denied slaves the right to testify in court against white people. -The laws contained no provisions to legalize slave marriages or divorce -if an owner killed a slave while punishing him, the act was generally not considered a crime -Slaves, however, faced the death penalty for killing or even resisting a white person and for inciting revolt -extraordinarily rigid provisions for defining a person's race:if you are black no matter how much you are black - anyone even rumored to possess any such trace was presumed to be black unless he or she could prove otherwise—which was, of course, almost impossible to do -suggest that slaves lived under a uniformly harsh and dismal regime.

Slavery in the Cities

-slaves had little contact with free blacks and lower-class whites, and masters maintained fairly direct and effective control; a deep and seemingly unbridgeable chasm yawned between slavery and freedom -gained numerous opportunities to mingle with free blacks and with whites -a master often could not supervise his slaves closely and at the same time use them profitably - Slaves on contract worked in mining and lumbering (often far from cities); but others worked on the docks and on construction sites, drove wagons, and performed other unskilled jobs in cities and towns -white southerners generally considered slavery to be incompatible with city life, and as southern cities grew the number of slaves in them declined -Fearing conspiracies and insurrections, urban slave owners sold off much of their male property to the countryside. -forced segregation of urban blacks, both free and slave, from white society increased -Segregation was a means of social control intended to make up for the loosening of the discipline of slavery itself in urban areas

Southern Work Habit

-suggested that the southern climate—with its long, hot, steamy summers—was less suitable for industrial development than the climate of the North - southern work habits (perhaps a reflection of the debilitating effects of the climate) impeded industrialization; some white southerners appeared—at least to many northern observers -lack the strong work ethic that fueled northern economic development - set of values distinctive to the South that discouraged the growth of cities and industry

Planter Class

-the cotton magnates, the sugar, rice, and tobacco nabobs, the whites who owned at least forty or fifty slaves and 800 or more acres—exercised power and influence far in excess of their numbers. -true aristocracies, long entrenched; liked to look upon themselves as nobility -till first generation settlers struggled for many years to clear land and develop a plantation in what was at first a rugged wilderness, and only relatively recently had started to live in the comfort and luxury for which they became famous -They avoided such "coarse" occupations as trade and commerce; those who did not become planters often gravitated toward the military -"suitable" career for men raised in a culture in which medieval knights (as portrayed in the novels of Walter Scott) were a powerful and popular image

Life Under Slavery

-they received cheap clothing and shoes. They lived in crude cabins, called slave quarters, usually clustered together in a complex near the master's house -The plantation mistress or a doctor retained by the owner provided some medical care; but slave women themselves—as "healers" and midwives, or simply as mothers—were the more important source. -harvest time is peak of work -slave women: laboring in field and domestic chores (cooking, cleaning, and child rearing) -Because slave families were often divided, with husbands and fathers frequently living on neighboring plantations (or, at times, sold to plantation owners far away), black women often found themselves acting in effect as single parents. -Slaves generally received at least enough necessities to enable them to live and work -Slave mothers had large families, but the enforced poverty in which virtually all African Americans lived ensured that fewer of their children would survive to adulthood than the children of white parents.

"Honor"

-white males adopted an elaborate code of chivalry, which obligated them to defend their "honor," often through dueling -think they have courtesy, distancing themselves from the cruelty and disrespect that were so fundamental to the slave system they controlled

the "new" cotton

prevented decline of Southern economies into possibly non-agricultural pursuits -a hardier and coarser strain of cotton that could grow successfully in a variety of climates and in a variety of soils - harder to process than the long-staple variety; its seeds were more difficult to remove from the fiber → cotton gin solved that problem -Demand for cotton was growing rapidly. The growth of the textile industry in Britain in the 1820s and 1830s, and in New England in the 1840s and 1850s, created an enormous new demand for the crop -There were periodic fluctuations in cotton prices, resulting generally from overproduction; periods of boom frequently gave way to abrupt busts... continued to grow -resulted in a large increase in slaves - sale of slaves to the Southwest became an important economic activity in the upper South and helped the troubled planters of that region compensate for the declining value of their crops

The Cotton Economy

shift of economic power from the "upper South" (the original southern states along the Atlantic coast) to the "lower South" (the expanding agricultural regions in the new states of the Southwest) -That shift reflected above all the growing dominance of cotton in the southern economy.

Nat Turner Rebellion

slave preacher, led a band of African Americans who armed themselves with guns and axes and, on a summer night, went from house to house in Southampton County, Virginia -killed men women and children -most successful of the revolts -sympathy with black → jail time -was the only actual large-scale slave insurrection in the nineteenth-century South, but fear of slave conspiracies and renewed violence pervaded the section as long as slavery lasted

cotton gin

solves labor problem, allows people to do things with more efficiency --> buy more land and make more money

Women Academies

trained women to be suitable wives by domestic taxes because women didn't really need to be educated

Task System

under which slaves were assigned a particular task in the morning, for example, hoeing one acre; after completing the job, they were free for the rest of the day (most common in rice culture)

hired labor instead of slavery

use of hired labor, when available, for the most unhealthy or dangerous tasks. -A traveler in Louisiana noted, for example, that Irishmen were employed to clear malarial swamps and to handle cotton bales at the bottom of chutes extending from the river bluff down to a boat landing