The Old South

Agenda Bell Ringer: Interpret the quote below: “They work little, and that little, badly; they earn little, they sell little; they buy little, and they have little– very little of the common comforts and consolations of civilized life.” 2. Notes: King Cotton and Social Hierarchy of the South (25) 3. Gone with the Wind Analysis (15) 4. North vs. South: The slavery debate Prep (20) 5. Reading Quiz 10 (10) HW:

King Cotton Cotton became a dominant crop with British textiles expanding along with American industry. Lower South was suited for the production of cotton because of the warm climate. Cotton did not require the irrigation or machinery of sugar plantations. Cotton took up 75% of the slaves within the South. It was convenient to plant cotton in relation to corn. Several reasons behind a unity in the South, even though upper southern states did not look at cotton as much of a cash crop. Settlers in the Lower South originally were from the Upper South All white southerner’s benefitted from the 3/5 clause All southerners did not like abolitionists Divergence in the South Stayed rural as the North expanded While factories in the North created finished products, Southern factories merely finished raw materials. Cotton into textiles, trees into lumber Industrialization does not hit the South because they had their money tied up in cash crops.

Social Groups in the South “They work little, and that little, badly; they earn little, they sell little; they buy little, and they have little– very little of the common comforts and consolations of civilized life.” Some claimed that the South was backwards, but it did maintain some progressive features Edmund Ruffin was a supporter of crop rotation and fertilizer. He would commit suicide at the end of the Civil War Four major groups: Planters Small Slaveholders Yeomen Pine Barrens

Antebellum Planter Society Popular Image of the South Large homes with grand porches overseeing large numbers of slaves Belmead on the James was constructed by slaves in the 1840s. Extremely opulent plantation, mainly grew tobacco Wealth was in slaves, not material goods They always had to look for new land to maintain profits. Women were always left on plantations, and they would occasionally take respite from the isolation by going into the city. Plantations were self-sufficient, and highly organized structures with levels of overseers and slaves.

Small Slaveholders 88 percent of all slaveholders owned fewer than twenty slaves Twenty percent weren’t even farmers. Depending on geographic location, slaveholders would either aspire to become large scale planters (lower south), to upper southern slaveholders that did not aspire to be part of the planter class. Led the initial push into the lower south, then the large planters arrived, buying much of the land.

Yeomen and Pine Barrens Largest group of southern whites. They do NOT own slaves Primarily looked into subsistence farming Occasionally would hire slaves to tend the fields Predominantly young, they settled in the upper south. Self-sufficiency, and profit if it comes Very community minded. Pine Barrens Squatted on lands, and built crude shacks Utilized as an example by the abolitionists, slavery degraded poor whites Self-reliant and independent. They would not work in the same capacity as slaves, and chose to be isolated from the masses