Colin Ulmer

Conley
9/10
The South Expands: Slavery and Society 1820-1860
APUSH Chapter 11 Notes

I) Creating the Cotton South

Brief Reminder: The Development of Slavery & Plantations

Slavery began on the tobacco plantations of the Chesapeake and the rice fields of
the Carolina Low Country.

Slavery grew on the sugar fields of Louisiana, on the hemp farms of Kentucky and
Tennessee, and especially on the cotton plantations of the states bordering the Gulf of
Mexico (Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas).
1790: The west boundary of the plantation system ran through the middle of Georgia.
1830: The west boundary of the plantation system ran through western Louisiana.
1860: The west boundary of the plantation system ran far into Texas.
This expansion of slavery was aided through the following actions of the federal government:
1.
In 1803, the government bought Louisiana from the French.
2.
In the 1830s, the government removed the Native Americans from the
southeastern states.
3.
In 1840, the government annexed Texas and the Mexican territories.
This westward expansion provided more land to be cultivated by slaves and turned into slave
states.
Between 1776 and 1809, most of the slaves were imported from Africa. Then, Congress
outlawed the slave trade. Though many Africans had been imported, the demand for slaves
exceeded the supply. So planters then decided to import slaves illegally through Spanish Florida
until 1819, and then they imported slaves through the Mexican province of Texas. However,
there still werent enough slaves, so planters began to buy slaves from the Chesapeake region
and the Carolinas (Upper South), where the slave population was increasing naturally (through
sex).
This slave-buying mania led to a forced migration of slaves from the Upper South to the Cotton
South. The migration began in 1810. This migration took two forms:
1.
Transfer: Chesapeake and Carolina planters sold their plantations and moved to
the Cotton South, bringing their slaves with them.
2.
Sale: The slaves alone were sold and moved to the Cotton South.
The new slave trade had two forms: a coastal system through the Atlantic seaports, and inland
commerce using rivers and roads.
1.
Coastal system:

Beginning in the late 1700s, sugar plantations were set up in Louisiana. The sugar
plantations required a lot of labor because many slaves died working the sugar fields
(thus sugar was known as a killer crop). To meet the high demand for slaves, slave
traders hunted for potential slaves near the Atlantic port cities. The potential slaves were
auctioned in the cities and then sent to Louisiana, where they became actual slaves.
Northern abolitionists hated this system because it was highly visible.
Inland commerce:
The inland trade was less visible than the coastal system but more extensive.
Professional slave traders would buy slaves from rural villages, and then marched them in
coffles (columns of slaves bound to each other) to Alabama, Mississippi, and Missouri
(1830s), and to Arkansas and Texas (1850s).
Chesapeake and Carolina planters provided the slave trade with slaves. Some
planters sold their slaves to the trade because they were in debt. Other planters sold their
slaves as a form of business; they knew that they could earn profit doing so.
1.

The slave trade was crucial to the prosperity of the southern economy because:
1.
It provided people with workers so they could start new cotton plantations in the
Gulf states (Cotton South).
2.
It bolstered the economy of the Upper South.
The slave trade affected slave families by:
1.
Increasing their status as property. This made slaves more vulnerable (to being
constantly sold, threatened to be sold, etc.)
2.
Breaking apart many slave marriages and families. Husbands were commonly
separated from wives, and children were commonly separated from parents. But because so
many slave marriages occurred, some slave owners saw themselves as benevolent masters.
Other slave masters were more honest about the suffering that the slaves endured because of
forced separation.

The Dual Cultures of the Planter Elite

The plantation elite was made up of two different groups:
1.
Traditional aristocrats of the Old South: (Chesapeake, Carolinas, Georgia)
2.
Market-driven entrepreneurs of the New South (Cotton South): (Alabama,
Mississippi)
Traditional aristocrats of the Old South:
The traditional aristocrats adopted the manners and values of the English gentry.
They believed in a republican aristocracy - they thought that democratic rulers would

interfere with their property in slaves. They opposed democracy, professional politicians
(the planters themselves wanted to rule), universal suffrage, and egalitarian society; they
believed in inequality. They married within their families to maintain their exclusivity
and status. They lived in luxury.
Rice planters: when cheap rice from Asia cuts their profit, the rice farmers sold
some slaves and worked the others harder. This allowed them to maintain their luxurious
lifestyle.
Tobacco planters: the westward migration of planters and their slaves created a
tobacco-growing economy where planters that owned 5 - 20 had an increasingly
important role.
Defense of slavery: the slave-owners thought that slavery was a positive good
because it allowed the whites to have a civilized lifestyle and it provided tutelage for the
genetically inferior blacks. Planters who took this ideology to heart interfered
increasingly in the live of their slaves (aristocratic paternalism), often encouraging them
to be religious. Slave-owners also backed up slavery by using religious justification,
saying that the Jews had owned slaves and Jesus never condemned slavery.
Market-driven entrepreneurs of the New South:
There was less luxury and aristocratic paternalism in the New South because
everything was only focused on cotton production. This also meant that slaves were
treated harshly to ensure that they would constantly work. Slaves worked harder in the
New South than in the Old South.
1820s: planters used a gang-labor system to increase their profits. In the system,
planters organized gangs of slaves to work. The gangs were supervised by black drivers
and white overseers, who whipped slaves to ensure they worked at a constant pace.
Results of the cotton planters desire for profit:
1. Growing only cotton and not rotating crops quickly depleted the soil
2. Because slaves in the gang-labor system worked almost two times as quickly as

slaves not under the system, slaves in the gang-labor system produced large
profits for the planters. This made the gang-labor system more prevalent.
Planters, Smallholding Yeomen, and Tenants
Though the South was a slave society, most white southerners did not own slaves. The
percentage of families with slaves decreased between 1800 and 1860. 5% of the white
southerners owned 50% of the Souths slave population.
Middle class planters (played a substantial role):
1. Owned almost 40% of the Souths slave population
2. Produced over 30% of the Souths cotton
3. Many had 2 careers, one as a planter, the other as a skilled artisan or professional

(brick factory owner, sawmill owner, doctor, lawyer [lawyers also commonly
elected as politicians])
Smallholders (similar to the yeomen in the North because they worked the land themselves):
1. Some were wealthy. Other were poor people who tried to earn money (the effort
was supported by elite planters and proslavery advocates).
2. Ambitious smallholders saved or borrowed money to get more land and laborers.
They ruled their smallholdings with a firm hand.
3. Wives of smallholders had little power (like wives in the North), so they turned to
religion.
Most smallholders worked hard and died poor. Others ended selling their slaves and land
to pay off debts, and these people ended up becoming propertyless tenants who worked
on the estates of wealthy landlords. The tenants enjoyed few of the benefits of slavery
and suffered many of its consequences.
1. Gained little respect because only blacks were considered fit for hard work.
2. They couldnt hope for a better life for their children because the wealthy

slave owners refused to pay taxes to fund public schools.

3. Because wealthy slave owners bid up the price of slaves, tenants couldnt buy
any, which deprived the tenants of a way to earn money.
However, the tenants still felt that they ranked above the blacks.
Many southern whites left the planter-dominated counties to become yeomen farmers in
the Appalachian hill country and beyond. They had modest goals, one of which was to
control local governments, because the yeomen knew that the cotton revolution had
undercut the democratic potential of the Revolutionary era and given independent family
farmers a subordinate place in society and politics.
The Politics of Democracy
The slave-owning elite didnt dominate the political life of the Cotton South.
1819: Alabama Constitution. Granted suffrage to all white men; it also provided for a
secret ballot, apportionment based on population, and the election of county supervisors,
sheriffs, and clerks of court.
Democratic institutions meant that political factions in Alabama had to compete for popular
favor. To gain favor, Alabama Democrats nominated candidates, and endorsed low taxes and
other policies that would have popular support. Though the Whigs continued to advocate the
American System, they also had candidates that appealed to the common people.
Alabama legislators usually enacted policies that reflected the interests of the slave owners, but
they were careful not to exclude the yeoman by proposing too many of the expensive public
works projects that the Whigs wanted. The legislature was also careful not to lay oppressive
taxes.
The booming cotton market deterred industrialization by because southerners didnt put in

capital and entrepreneurial energy into forms of economic activity more productive than slavery.
Southerners also failed to take advantage of the opportunities created by technological
innovations of the 1800s (steel plow, machine tools, etc.) that would have increased the regions
productivity. The cotton market also deterred industrialization because poor European
immigrants didnt want to settle in the South because they feared competition from the slave
labor. This lack of immigrants deprived the region of people to drain swamps, work on railroads,
build canals, etc. Thus, the South remained an economic colony of Britain.

The African American World

By the 1820s, slave culture was already a mix of black culture and American culture.
Evangelical Black Protestantism exemplified the mixing of the two cultures. Evangelical
Protestantism came to the South during the Second Great Awakening. Until that time, most
slaves kept their African religious practices. Evangelical Protestantism was brought to the South
by Baptist and Methodist preachers. Slaves converted in the Chesapeake region, who were
brought to the Cotton South, also spread Protestantism. The converted slaves also adapted
Protestant teachings to black needs (talked about treating slave masters by the Golden Rule,
ignored teachings about original sin, predestination, and unthinking obedience to authority).
Slaves expressed their religion in African ways, such as through joyous singing.
Other mixing of black and American culture in slave society: Gullah (an African dialect) wasnt
spoken as much in the Cotton South. Instead, slaves spoke black English, which had some
similarities with Gullah.
Marriage and Kinship

African-Americans, unlike whites, didnt believe in incest.

Slave marriages werent recognized by law, however; many newlyweds had their
marriage blessed by a Christian minister. Others marked their marriage by following the
African custom of jumping over a broomstick.

Newlyweds whose parents remained in the Old South often adopted elderly slaves
as their aunts and uncles.
Big Idea: The slave trade destroyed the slaves families but not their family values.
The creation of these fictive kinship networks formed a sense of community. Naming children
also built community. Slaves usually named their children African names, or named them after
family members (sometimes after family members left behind in the Old South).
Some slaves had substantial control over their lives. After they finished their work, they could
work in their own private fields, planting crops for their own use. However this only happened
on the rice fields, and not on the cotton and sugar plantations.

Resistance
Planters constantly feared slave rebellions. The planters knew that, by law, they had
virtually unlimited power over their slaves. However, this power required brutal coercion, and
not many masters were willing to do that, especially as slave prices rose.
Slaves would slow down the pace of work by faking sick and by losing or breaking tools.
Because of the slaves bonds of the community, it became dangerous for a master to
ignore the slaves resistance. Slaves might retaliate against their masters by setting fire to their
houses, poisoning their food, or destroying their crops and equipment.
Out of their fear of rebellion, some masters stopped cruel punishments, instead offering
rewards for good slaves. However, these masters knew that they could resort to violence, and
many masters continued to rape their slaves.
However, most slaves knew that revolts were futile. (Exceptions were Gabriel and Martin
Prossner, and Nat Turner.) Slaves also knew that escaping was problematic. Most slaves just
built the best lives they could on the plantations. Slaves won greater control of the products of
their labor. They got paid for overwork and got the right to have their own garden and sell its
produce. Then they could use that money for whatever they wanted. By the 1850s, many
African-Americans reaped rewards from that underground economy.

The Free Black Population

North:
Even in the North, blacks didnt have total freedom. Whites still regarded blacks as their social
inferiors, and they did everything they could to confine blacks to a low social and economic
class. Few blacks owned land; many were laborers, tenant farmers, domestic servants, etc.
Blacks were usually forbidden to vote, and werent allowed to work for the post office, claim
public lands, or have a U.S. passport.
Some successful African-Americans:
1.
Benjamin Banneker: mathematician, surveyor, helped lay out the capital in the
District of Columbia.
2.
Joshua Johnson: portrait artist.
3.
Paul Cuffee: merchant
African-Americans also founded schools, fellowship groups, their own congregation, and a new
religious denomination (African Methodist Episcopal Church).
South:
Most free blacks lived in coastal cities and in the Upper South. Freedom in the South was fragile.
Free blacks accused of crimes were often denied a jury trial, and free blacks had to carry
manumission documents to prove their freedom. However, because not many European
immigrants wanted to immigrate to the South, blacks became the backbone of the Souths urban

artisan workforce.
Some free blacks wanted to advance the welfare of their families, so they distanced themselves
from plantation slaves and assimilated into white culture. Some privileged blacks adopted the
perspective of the planter class. They owned slaves.
However, most free blacks acknowledged their connection to the slaves. These free blacks,
knowing that their own freedom wasnt truly secure until slavery was abolished, worked for the
anti-slavery movement.