Chapter 16 Flashcards
(54 cards)
The export earnings provided capital for Republics economic growth. The south produced more that half the worlds supply. 75% came from the south
20% populace worked in textiles.
Britain was tied to it. Gave the south power. “______ was king.”
Cotton
1850- only 1,733 families owned more that 100 slaves, this group provided political and social leadership. Enjoyed lions share of southern wealth. Educated their children in finest school.
Planter Aristocracy
Dominance was favored, Widened gap between rich and poor. Hampered tax-supported public education. Idealized feudalism of medieval Europe. .
Misstresses showed tender regard for their bond women. Saw themselves as “members” of the household. Slavery strained bonds of womanhood. Women believed in abolition
Planter Aristocracy
Mistresses commanded sizable household staff. Relationships between mistress and slave ranged form affectionate to atrocious.
Plantations shaped women lives
agriculture worrisome, distasteful, and sordid because despoiled good earth. quick profit led to excessive cultivation of “land butchery”. caused population to leave for west and northwest
Plantation Life
Big got bigger and small got smaller.
Ecomimic structure of south became increasingly monopolistic
Over speculation in land and slaves, slaves represented heavy investment of capital, an entire slave quarter might be wiped out by disease.
Financial instability of plantation system
prices at mercy and world conditions, system discouraged healthy diversification
Dominance by king cotton led to dangerous dependence on one crop economy
Note:
Southern planters represented north growing fat in their expense
Immigrants added to manpower and wealth of north, German and irish immigration to south discouraged by: competition with slave labor, high cost of fertile land, european ignorance of cotton farming. south became most anglo saxon part of the USA
Cotton King repeeled large scale european immigration
_____% of southern population was foreign born as compared to _____ % for north
4.4, 18.7
Only a handful of southern whites lived in Grecian pillared mansions, only 1733 families owned a hundred or more slaves, most slaves owners didnt own majority of slaves but were majority of master, these lesser masters were typically small farmers
Southern Life
Under the great body of white that owned slaves there where _________
Whites that didnt own slaves.
Only _____ of white southerners owned slaves or belonged to slave owning family
1/4
Most whites were _____ and not part of cotton export economy
Food Farmers
Hoped to buy slaves, took pride in presumed racial superiority, logic of economics joined with illogic of racism to buttress slave system
Whites without slaves had no direct economic stake in slavery, yet they defended slave system.
Independent small farmers who lived in valleys of Appalachian range
Had little in common with whites of flatlands
When war came, mountain whites constituted vitally important peninsula of Unionism
Played significant role in crippling Confederacy
After Civil War, they were only concentrated Republican strength in solid Democratic South
In special category of white southerners were mountain whites.
250,000 slaves by 1860. Some in upper south traced emancipation to idealism of revolutionary days. In lower south, many were mulattoes, some purchased their freedom, many owned property, were a kind of third race, banned from certain occupations, vulnerable to being hijacked into slavery.
Souths free blacks.
In U.S.A., price of “black ivory” so high before Civil War that thousands of blacks smuggled into South
Ironically, suppression of international slave trade fostered growth of vigorous internal slave trade
Most of increase in U.S. slave population came from natural reproduction:
Distinguished North American slavery from slavery in more disease-ridden southerly New World societies
Slavery
Worth $2 billion in capital by 1860
Slaves were primary form of wealth in South:
Cared for as any asset is cared for by prudent capitalist
Sometimes spared dangerous work
Slavery was profitable, even though it hobbled economic development of region as a whole
Planters regarded slaves as investments
Women who bore thirteen or fourteen babies were prized as “rattlin’ good breeders”
White masters forced their attentions on female slaves fathering sizable mulatto population, most of which remained enslaved
Breeding of slaves not openly encouraged
Most revolting aspects of slavery
Families separated with distressing frequency
Slavery’s greatest psychological horror
Abolitionists decried practice
Harriet Beecher Stowe 1852 novel: Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Slave auctions were brutal sights
How did slaves actually live?
Conditions varied greatly:
Slavery meant hard work, ignorance, and oppression
No political rights; minimal protection
Protection laws difficult to enforce since slaves forbidden to testify in court or to have marriages legally recognized
Floggings were common
Strong-willed slaves sometimes sent to breakers who lavishly used lash
Savage beatings made sullen laborers & hurt resale values
Typical master had too much money invested in slaves to beat them bloody on regular basis
Stretched from South Carolina to Georgia into new southwest: Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana
Frontier life was harsh
Blacks concentrated in black belt of deep south by 1860
