Southern Society in the Early Republic PDF

# Topic 4.13: Southern Society in the Early Republic ## Beginning of the South - The Southern colonies had developed as parts of distinct regions (New England, Middle, and Southern). - Differences among immigrants and limited transportation compounded those differences. - As transportation improve...

# Topic 4.13: Southern Society in the Early Republic ## Beginning of the South - The Southern colonies had developed as parts of distinct regions (New England, Middle, and Southern). - Differences among immigrants and limited transportation compounded those differences. - As transportation improved in the 19th century, the regional distinctions remained, based on geography and economics. - The states where slavery was widely practiced formed a distinctive region, the South. - By 1861, the region included 15 states, all but four of which (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri) seceded and joined the Confederacy. ## Agriculture and King Cotton - Agriculture was the foundation of the South's economy. - By the 1850s, small factories in the region produced approximately 15% of the nation's manufactured goods. - Tobacco, rice and sugarcane were important cash crops, but these were far exceeded by the South's chief economic activity: the production and sale of cotton. - Mechanized textile mills in England coupled with Eli Whitney's cotton gin made cotton cloth affordable, not just in Europe and the United States, but throughout the world. - Before 1860, Britain's mills depended chiefly on the American South for its supply of cotton fiber. - Originally, the cotton was grown almost entirely in two states, South Carolina and Georgia. - As demand and profits increased, planters moved westward. - New land was constantly in demand because the high cotton yields depleted the soil. - By the 1850s, cotton provided two-thirds of all U.S. exports and linked the South and Great Britain. - "Cotton is king," said one southerner of his region's greatest asset. ## Agriculture, Mining, and Manufacturing Before the Civil War - Image of a map of the South, depicting various agricultural and industrial activities. ## Slavery, the "Peculiar Institution" - Wealth in the South was measured in terms of land and enslaved people. - Enslaved people were treated as property, subject to being bought and sold. - While some White southerners were sensitive about how they treated enslaved people, they referred to slavery as "that peculiar institution." - In colonial times, they justified slavery as an economic necessity. - In the 19th century, apologists for slavery mustered historical and religious arguments to support their claim that it was good for both the enslaved and the master. ## Population - The cotton boom was largely responsible for a fourfold increase in the number of people held in slavery, from 1 million in 1800 to nearly 4 million in 1860. - The increase came from natural growth as well as thousands of Africans smuggled into the South in violation of the 1808 law against importing enslaved people. - In parts of the Deep South, enslaved African Americans made up as much as 75% of the total population. - Fearing slave revolts, southern legislatures added increased restrictions on movement and education to their slave codes. ## Economics - Enslaved workers did whatever their owners demanded of them. - Most labored in the fields, but many learned skilled crafts or worked as house servants, in factories, or on construction gangs. - Because of the greater profits to be made on the new cotton plantations in the West, many owners in the Upper South sold their enslaved workers to owners in the cotton-rich Deep South of the lower Mississippi Valley. - By 1860, the value of an enslaved field hand had risen to almost $2,000 at a time when a typical wage for a laborer was $1 a day. - The heavy capital investment in slavery meant that the South had much less capital than the North to undertake industrialization. ## White Society - Southern Whites observed a rigid hierarchy among themselves. - Aristocratic planters lived comfortably at the top of society. - Poor farmers and mountain people struggled at the bottom. ## Aristocracy - Members of the South's small elite of wealthy planters owned at least 100 enslaved people and at least 1,000 acres. - They dominated the state legislatures of the South and enacted laws that favored the large landholders' economic interests. ## Farmers - The vast majority of slaveholders held fewer than 20 people in bondage and worked only several hundred acres. - Southern White farmers produced the bulk of the cotton crop, worked in the fields alongside enslaved African Americans, and lived as modestly as farmers of the North. ## Poor Whites - Three-fourths of the White households in the South owned no enslaved people. - They could not afford the rich river-bottom farmland controlled by the planters, and many lived in the hills as subsistence farmers. - These "hillbillies," or "poor White trash," as planters derisively called them, defended the system, hoping that some day they, too, could own enslaved people. - The slave system meant that White farmers, no matter how poor, still felt superior on the social scale to Black people. ## Mountain People - Small farmers lived in frontier conditions along the slopes and valleys of the Appalachian and Ozark mountains. - They were somewhat isolated from the rest of the South. - Mountain people disliked the planters and slavery and many (including a future president, Andrew Johnson of Tennessee) remained loyal to the Union. ## Cities - The South was an agricultural region with few large commercial cities. - The largest city in the region was New Orleans, with a population of about 170,000. - Only three other southern cities—St. Louis, Louisville, and Charleston—had populations greater than 40,000 people. ## The South's Unique Culture - The South developed a unique culture and outlook on life. - As cotton became the basis of its economy, slavery became the focus of its political thought. - White southerners felt increasingly isolated and defensive about slavery as northerners grew hostile toward it, and as Great Britain, France, Mexico, and other European and Latin America states outlawed it altogether. ## Code of Chivalry - Dominated by the aristocratic planter class, the agricultural South was in some ways a feudal society. - Southern gentlemen ascribed to a code of chivalrous conduct, which included a strong sense of personal honor, the defense of womanhood, and paternalistic attitudes toward all who were deemed inferior, especially slaves. ## Education - The upper class valued a college education for their children. - Acceptable professions for gentlemen were limited to farming, law, the ministry, and the military. - For the lower classes, schooling beyond the early elementary grades was generally not available. - The law strictly prohibited teaching enslaved people to read or write. ## Religion - The slavery question affected churches. - Both Methodist and Baptist denominations preached biblical support for slavery. - Both groups split into northern and southern branches in the 1840s. - The Unitarians, who challenged slavery, faced declining membership and hostility. - Even Catholics and Episcopalians, who took a neutral stand on slavery, saw their numbers decline in the South. ## Social Reform - The antebellum reform movement of the first half of the 19th century was largely found in the northern and western states, with little impact in the South. - While "modernizers" worked to perfect society in the North, southerners were more committed to tradition and slower to support public education and humanitarian reforms. - They were alarmed to see northern reformers join forces to support the antislavery movement. - Increasingly, they viewed social reform as a northern threat against the southern way of life.