1. The Antebellum South Social and Economic Structures

2. The Southern Exception Persistence of labor intensive agriculture Almost 50% illiteracy (figure includes enslaved persons) Fewer reform-minded voluntary associations Commitment to tradition and stability

3. Bubbadom versus Yankeedom In 1860, Mass. manufactured more than all eleven future CSA states combined. Southern states had but 6% of U. S. manufacturing capacity New York had more banking capital than all fifteen slave states. 40% of northern workers in agriculture; 84% of southern workers in ag. Percapita investment in manufacturing: 43.73 in North; 13.25 in South. 94% literacy rate in North versus 83% of southern crackers; 58% if slaves were included. 72% of northern school-aged children enrolled in school versus 35% of cracker children.

4. Colonial Economics 1815-1860: Cotton made up more than 50% of U. S. exports: “Cotton is king.” Marketing costs reduced southern profits by 20% (100 to 150 million $ per annum) Most value added outside of south. Led to Southern Commercial Conventions (1837, 1852-1959) Rather than foster economic reform, SCCs became vehicles for sectional and secessionist sentiment

6. Slavery and the Southern Ecomony Both capital and labor—the more slaves you bought, the more capital was tied up in labor. “To sell cotton in order to buy more negroes, to make more cotton to buy more negroes, ad infinitum, is the aim and direct tendency of all the operations of the thoroughgoing cotton planter.”

7. Profitability Plantations had greater annual returns than manufacturing concerns. Slaves received only 22% (food, clothing, shelter) of the profits earned by plantations. Smaller southern farms were not as profitable. Slavery inhibited alternative economic development. Planters developed ideologies that justified their activities and made alternative economic systems seem evil or immoral. Whither African-Americans, if slavery were abolished.

8. Slavery 75% of slaves worked in plantation agriculture. About 1/3 of southern households owned slaves in 1860. Relationship between non-slaveholding whites and slavery? Racism, white supremacy, herrenvolk democracy. Impact on enslaved persons? Impact on slave owners and other whites?