Slavery and the South

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Slavery and the South
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Southern economy

• Did not experience the same revolution in
  transportation/manufacturing
• So. industry limited to crude textiles coal and
  mining
• South remained rural
• 1860 40 Northerners live in cities
• 1860 7 of Southerners lived in cities
• Southern population growth did not keep pace
• Immigrants settled in the North

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Southern cities (1860)

• Much smaller, less dev. than the N.
• Charleston 41,000
• Richmond 38,000
• New Orleans 169,000
• New York 805,658
• Philadelphia 565,529
• Boston 177,840
• Weak institutional infrastructure
• Fewer schools, colleges, libraries, even churches

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Population density, per square mile in 1860

• Northeast 65.4 MA 153.1 NYC 86,4000
• TX 2.3 LA 15.6 GA 18
• Farms not clustered around villages
• To visitors, the South seemed almost uninhabited
• Frederick Law Olmstead (1850)

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Why the difference?

• Slavery
• Cheap labor weakened the demand for technological
  innovation
• Ownership of slaves was highest form of status
• So capital was invested in slaves/land
• Less incentive for manufacturers
• Almost half population had no purchasing power
• Elite bought their luxury goods primarily from
  Europe

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Slavery becomes entrenched

• Post-revolutionary era
• All Northern states had moved to abolish slavery
  by 1804
• Many private manumissions, esp. in the upper S.
• Nevertheless, slavery expanded
• Particularly after 1790s
• Rev 500,000 slaves (both N. and S.)
• CW 4 million slaves, confined to the South

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King Cotton

• After the Rev., slave owners searched for a
  profitable crop
• Demand for tobacco fluctuated
• Rice limited to coastal areas
• Britain importing more and more cotton
• Problem
• Separating seed from fiber very time-consuming

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Eli Whitneys cotton gin (1793)
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Cotton revolutionizes South

• Hugely profitable
• By 1825, Amer. S. the worlds dominant supplier
• By 1850, 70 of GBs cotton supply imported from
  the South
• Surpassed tobacco, rice and sugar
• 1794 8 million lbs.
• 1804 64 million lbs.
• 1860 1 billion lbs.
• Fueled westward expansion

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Population Patterns in the South, 1850s
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Jefferson Davis, a cotton aristocrat
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Yeoman farmers

• 1860 75 of southern whites did NOT own slaves
• Many descended from Scottish/Irish immigrants
• Lived on less prosperous land hilly, rocky soil
• High rates of migration
• Less connected to the market economy than
  northern, mid-western farmers

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What connected yeoman farmers to planters?

• Economic dependency
• Borrowed slaves brought cotton to plantations
  to be ginned etc.
• Democratic politics
• Culture
• Race
• Civil War will reveal fissures between the elite
  and yeoman farmers

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Slaveholding and Class Structure in the South,
1830