Colin Ulmer

9/10
The South Expands: Slavery and Society 1820-1860
APUSH Chapter 12 Notes

I) Creating the Cotton South

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.
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
1.

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.
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.