Textbook Notes

• 1800-1860: White planters move west and use slaves to cultivate millions of acres of land
• 1840: South produces and exports more than two-thirds of the global cotton supply

  
• "Cotton is King"

  The South's cotton production and exports were dominant globally

  
• Cycle of the cotton economy

  1. Sell cotton

  2. Buy slaves

  3. Sell more cotton

  4. Buy more slaves
• Greed led to the expansion of slavery
• American Colonization transports few freed blacks to Africa

  1817
• Expansion of the plantation system

  • Extends to Georgia in 1790
  • Extends into Texas by 1860
• Land area of the plantation system doubled
• 1776-1809: Before the Atlantic Slave Trade was outlawed, planters bought around 115,000 slaves

  
• Supply and demand led to higher demand than supply, resulting in the illegal importation of slaves
• Planters looked to the Chesapeake region for labor due to the high African American population
• The natural increase in the slave population led to an increase in the domestic slave trade
• Slave exports from Virginia

  • 75,000 slaves in the 1810s
  • 75,000 slaves in the 1820s
  • 120,000 forced migrants in the 1830s
  • 85,000 in the 1840s and 1850s
  • Total: 440,000 African Americans

  
• 1860: The Upper South's demand for slaves resulted in the transport of over 1 million slaves, most of whom worked in the Deep South (Georgia to Texas)

  
• Methods of slave transfer

  • Chesapeake and Carolina planters sell plantations and transfer slaves to the Southwest
  • Giving slaves to children moving west
  • Sold through traders and planters
• Around 40% of African American migrants were transferred, while around 60% (600,000) were sold
• Sugar plantations

  A "killer" crop due to disease, overwork, and brutality leading to high death rates
• Slave trade routes


  • Coastal trade route to the Atlantic coast, sending slaves to sugar plantations in Louisiana
  • Inland system, an extensive route to the Cotton South, sending slaves to Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas from the Chesapeake and Carolina planters
• The domestic slave trade brought wealth to American traders and was crucial to the prosperity of planters
• Chattel principle

  The property principle or bill of sale principle, where slave earnings belong to the "owner"
• Property rights were seen as key to disciplining slaves, as they could be sold to the South as a "death sentence"
• Despite the separation of families, the sense of family among African Americans was strong, and they constructed lives for themselves in the Mississippi Valley
• Many southern whites saw themselves as "benevolent masters" and did not question the morality of slavery
• Charleston, South Carolina declared that the removal and transfer of slaves was consistent with "moral principle and with the highest order of civilization"
• Slavery peaked during the first half of the 19th century in the Chesapeake, Carolina low country, and Mississippi Valley

  
• Characteristics of the southern slaveowner elite

  • Small planter elite (3,000) each owning 100+ slaves
  • Accounted for two-thirds of all American men with over $100,000 during the Civil War
  • Produced 50% of all cotton

  
• The expansion of slavery increased inequalities in wealth and status, with 5% of southerners owning 2 million (50%) slaves and producing 50% of all cotton
• Two main groups of the planter elite

  • Old South (traditional aristocrats) - tobacco, rice
  • Upstart Capitalists - cotton
• The traditional southern gentry

  • Dominated the Tidewater region and low country of South Carolina and Georgia
  • Modeled themselves after English gentility and saw themselves as an aristocracy
  • Wanted a republican aristocracy with planters as the nobility and privilege
• The expansion of slavery increased inequalities in wealth and status
• Unsatisfied slaveless whites moved to the Appalachian hill country, known as "hillbillies", and were major Union sympathizers
• Justifications for slavery

  • Jeffersonians saw it as a "misfortune" and "necessary evil"
  • Apologists saw it as a "positive good" that provided an elegant lifestyle for the white elite and "tutelage for inferior blacks"
  • Christian slaveowners used religion to control slaves and justify the institution
• The cotton entrepreneurs

  • Less hypocrisy and elegance than the planter aristocracy
  • Saw slaves as "mean and stubborn" and whipped them to push them to work harder
  • Utilized a gang-labor system to increase productivity
• Breakdown of southern white society

  • Planter elites (top 5% owning over 50% of slaves and 50% of cotton)
  • Upper middle class (20% owning 40% of slaves and 30%+ of cotton)
  • Smallholding planters and yeomen
  • Poor freemen
• The cotton-based economy led to family farmers becoming the lower class, with independence only possible by moving north or west
• In the 1830s, southern settlers brought yeoman farming and plantation slavery to Arkansas and Missouri
• Americans migrated to Mexico (Texas) to take advantage of land grants and the encouragement of activist settlement policies
• By 1835, there were around 27,000 white Americans and 3,000 slaves in Texas, outnumbering the 3,000 Mexican residents
• The American settlers in Texas split into a war party wanting independence and a peace party wanting greater political autonomy within a decentralized Mexican republic
• The American rebellion in Texas led to the claim of independence and the legalization of slavery, despite Mexico's attempts to nullify the new laws