01:512:104 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: White Southerners, Pound Sterling, Aristocracy
16 May 2018
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Chapter 16 - The South and the Slavery Controversy 1793-
1860
"Cotton is King!"
• The Cotton kingdom developed into a huge agricultural factory, pouring out avalanches of the fluffy fiber.
Quick profits drew planters to the virgin bottomlands of the Gulf States causing cotton farmers to buy
more slaves and land.
• Northern shippers earned a large part of the profits, loading and bulging bales of cotton to southern ports,
transporting them to England, selling their fleecy cargo for pounds sterling, and would buy needed goods
to sale in the United States.
• To a large degree, the prosperity of both North and South rested on the bent backs of southern slaves.
• Cotton = for ½ the value of all Americans exports after 1840, holding foreign nations in partial bondage.
Britain's single most important manufacture in the 1850's was cotton cloth, and about one-fifth of its
population, directly or indirectly, drew it's livelihood from this industry.
• South produced more than ½ of entire world’s supply of cotton and about 75% of cotton supply of fiber
came from white-carpeted acres of the South
• In their eyes “Cotton was king”: the gin was his throne and the black bondsmen (slaves) were his
henchmen.
• Cotton was a powerful monarch = if war broke out between North and South, northern warships would cut
off the outflow of cotton therefore causing the British factories to close their gates and starving mobs
would force London gov’t to break the blockade and the South would triumph.
The Planter "Aristocracy"
• 1850, only 1,733 families owned more than 100 slaves--> this group led politically and socially
• these planter aristocrats enjoyed a large share of southern wealth: educated their children in finest
schools, money provided leisure for study, reflection, and statecraft, felt obligated to serve the public
• dominance by favored aristocracy=undemocratic-->widened gap between rich and poor, hampered tax-
supported public education(b/c rich planters sent their children to private institutions)
• Southern aristocrats idealized a feudal society and tried to bring back a type of medievalism (author Sir
Walter Scott helped them with this)
• plantation system shaped lives of southern women: the mistress commanded a large household staff of
mostly female slaves, gave daily orders to cooks, maids, seamstresses, laundresses, and body servants
• relationships between mistresses and slaves ranged from affectionate to atrocious: slavery strained
bonds of womanhood-->virtually no slaveholding women believed in abolition
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Slaves of the Slave System
• plantation agriculture was wasteful-->cotton spoiled the good earth, quick profits led to excessive
cultivation which led to a heavy flow of population to the west and northwest
• economic structure of south became monopolistic:small farmers sold to more prosperous neighbors and
went north or west
• plantation system financially unstable: temptation to overspeculate in land and slaves caused planters to
plunge in beyond their depth
• slaves were a heavy investment of capital: some injured, run away, wiped out by disease, etc.
• dangerous dependence on a one-crop economy-system discouraged healthy diversification of agriculture
and manufacturing
• southern planters resented the north growing at their expense, pained by heavy outward flow of
commissions and interest
• Cotton Kingdom repeled European immigration which added to manpower and wealth of north
• immigration(german, irish) to south discouraged by competition of slave labor, high cost of fertile land,
and ignorance of cotton growing
• white south became the most Anglo-Saxon section of the nation
The White Majority
• Only about one-fourth of white Southerners owned slaves or belonged to a slave owning family.
• The smaller slave owners did not own a majority of the slaves, but they made up a majority of the
masters.
• By 1860 the number of whites who didn't own slaves had reached 6,120,825. This was three-quarters of
all southern whites.
• Many of the poorer whites were hardly better off economically than the slaves, but they took comfort
knowing that they outranked African-American slaves.
Free Blacks: Slaves Without Masters
• Throughout the South were some free blacks who had purchased their freedom with earnings from labor
after hours.
• Free blacks were prohibited from working in certain occupations and forbidden from testifying against
whites in court. They were vulnerable to be taken back into slavery.
• Free blacks were also unpopular in the North. Several states forbade their entrance, most denied them
the right to vote, and some barred blacks from public schools. Anti-black feeling was frequently stronger
in the North than the South.
• Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist and self-educated orator of rare power, was several times mobbed
and beaten by northern rowdies.
Plantation Slavery
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