Transcript The Old South

THE OLD SOUTH
The religious changes of the Second Great Awakening, the romantic movement,
the development of a democratic political culture, and the creation of a
domestic national market dramatically changed the US
Describe the major regions of the South and explain the importance and
character of agriculture in the region.
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Cotton -fueled the southern economy and drove both white and slave populations steadily
westward and southward.
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Single-crop agriculture exhausted the soil
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These crops required less slave labor,
surplus slaves from the upper South were annually sold to sugar, cotton, and rice planters in the lower
South.
The prosperity of southern agriculture helped keep the South overwhelmingly rural.
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plowing accelerated erosion, and deforestation increased epidemic diseases.
upper South became more diversified agriculturally, as exhausted soils encouraged a switch to
new crops, especially wheat.
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cotton prices boomed on the world market
Indian tribes were forcibly removed
Few cities and towns developed
South lagged well behind in manufacturing.
Schools were rare and southern illiteracy was nearly ten times that of the north.
Slaves and plantations were not found everywhere in the South, but rather where good
agricultural land had a ready access to market.
Describe the distribution of slavery in
the South.
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Slaves were concentrated along the old eastern
seaboard (the Tidewater) and in the new plantation
areas of the Deep South.
The major source of agricultural labor in the Old
South, slavery was a highly profitable investment,
making the plantation system possible — which in
turn set the tone of Southern culture.
Describe the class structure of white southerners and its
relationship to slavery.
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At the top of the class structure of the Old South were slaveowners.
The refined plantation society of the Tidewater
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Plantations were complex business operations managed by the master.
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paternalism -more the ideal than reality.
Plantation mistresses also had important duties and responsibilities and hardly led lives of leisure.
Some complained of their lack of legal rights and especially the sexual relationships between white
men and slave women.
The majority of southern whites were non-slaveowning
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elegant homes
strong sense of family,
was much different from the raw society found on the cotton frontier, where planters often lived in
unpretentious homes and an aggressive business outlook was the norm.
independent yeoman farmers
owned their own farm and worked it with their family labor
he middle class of the South.
hurt socially and economically by slavery.
supported the institution out of racism and deeply ingrained fears of emancipation.
bottom of white society were the poor whites
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poverty stricken and scorned by other southern whites.
resented planters
disliked blacks even more intensely and were thus strongly opposed to emancipation.
Describe the institution of slavery and how it functioned as a labor
system and a system for regulating relations between the races.
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labor system and a caste system based on color.
long hours
 strict discipline
 physical punishment.
 Hardest working were the field hands, organized either by
gangs or tasks.
 Living conditions varied widely, but in general they had a
monotonous diet, crude housing, coarse and sometimes
inadequate clothing, and limited medical care.
 As a result, despite population growth, slaves had higher
infant mortality and a shorter life expectancy than whites.
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Describe slave culture and how it helped slaves bear up
under the pressures of slavery.
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cope with the pressures of bondage.
preserve a sense of family,
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sang songs that expressed their joy
Christianity of their own that emphasized their dignity as a people and promised
them release from the pain of bondage.
folk tales,
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which in their moral lessons taught young slaves how to survive in a crushing institution
like slavery.
Slaves were divided by occupations and color, but white racism and the
oppression of slavery drove slaves together in a common bond.
Free Southern African-Americans
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upper South
lived in rural areas
most urban group in southern society.
Few enjoyed economic success.
Laws restricting their activities grew more stringent over time. They were trapped
in a society that had no place for them.- Black codes
Discuss the ways slaves resisted the
institution of bondage.
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Slaves resisted the institution in many ways — some
overt (like Nat Turner's famous rebellion), most
subtle (like destroying or stealing property, or
running away). Slavery taught slaves to distrust
whites and hide their true feelings in the presence
of whites.
Describe the various ways southern
whites defended slavery.