Life in the South

1. Life in the South • chapter 9 Section Two • California State Standards 8.7.3, 8.7.4

2. Looking Back, Looking Ahead • In the last section, you learned about the economy of the South. In this section, you will read about the way of life of the Southern people.

3. Focusing on the Main Idea • Most farmers in the South did not own slaves and lived in poor rural areas. • Plantations varied in size and wealth and contained varying numbers of enslaved people. • The South was home to several large cities, and education began to grow in the mid-1800’s.

4. Places to Know • New Orleans • Charleston • Mobile • Savannah • Columbia • Chattanooga • Montgomery • Atlanta

5. Did You Know? • During the Civil War, the Mason-Dixon Line became symbolic for the boundary between the North and South. The line separated Pennsylvania, a free state, from Maryland and Delaware, slave-owning states.

6. What Was Life Like on a Small Farm? • Most white Southerners were small farmers without—or with just afew—enslaved workers. • Only a handful of planters could afford botha large number of slaves and grand mansions.

7. Who Were the Small Farmers? • Yeomen were farmers who did not have slaves. They made up thelargest group of whites in the South. • Tenant farmers worked on their landlords’ estates, not their ownland. • Rural poor people in the South would not take jobs that resembledthe work of enslaved people. They were proud and self-sufficient,although other Southerners looked down on them. They planted theirown food and hunted and fished.

8. What Were Homes Like in the South? • Most Southerners lived in simple homes, such as cottages made ofwood and plaster with thatched roofs. • Later many lived in framehouses or log cabins.

9. Discussion Question • Describe a yeoman’s farm life. • (Yeomen owned their farms, which rangedin size from 50 to 200 acres. Yeoman grew crops for their own use, and theyalso sold crops to local merchants. Often they traded their crops for goodsand services.)

10. What Were Plantations? • Plantations were large estates, some covering several thousand acres,with comfortable farmhouses. • Plantation owners measured their wealth by the number of enslavedworkers they had. • About 12 percent of the Southern population hadmore than half of the slaves.

11. Why Would Free African Americans buy Slaves? • Some free African Americans had enslaved workers. Most of theseAfrican Americans purchased their own family members, so theycould free them.

12. How Did Plantations Make Money? • Plantations had fixed costs—regular expenses such as housing, foodfor workers, and maintenance of cotton gins. These prices remainedthe same, while cotton prices changed from season to season. • Planters sold their cotton in cities such as New Orleans, Charleston,Mobile,and Savannah to get the best prices. These trade centerswere important to the cotton economy. • The agents of the cotton exchanges extended credit—a form of loan—to planters and then would hold the cotton for several months,waiting for the prices to rise.

13. What Did Plantation Wives do? • Plantation wives were responsible for watching over householdslaves, tending to them when they were sick, serving as theplantation’s accountant, and supervising the plantations’ buildingsand the fruit and vegetable gardens.

14. What Did Slaves Do On the Plantations? • Large plantations had many enslaved people to perform differentduties. • Some slaves were domestic servants, blacksmiths, carpenters,shoemakers, and weavers. Others tended livestock. Most slavesworked in the fields, planting and harvesting crops. • They weresupervised by an overseer,or plantation manager.

15. Discussion Question • Why would the life of a plantation wife be lonely? • (Plantation wiveswere lonely because their husbands traveled frequently to look at land or dealwith agents, so wives spent much time alone. They were also isolated onlarge plantations, some of which were out west in frontier country.)

16. What Were Southern Cities Like? • Several cities in the South were located at the crossroads of rail lines. • These cities included Columbia,South Carolina; Chattanooga,Tennessee; Montgomery, Alabama; and Atlanta,Georgia. • In the cities, free African Americans could form their own communities, although they still had limited rights. They could not move toother states and were not given equal rights in politics.

17. What Was Education Like in the South? • Plantation owners and other wealthy Southerners sent their childrento private schools, where they learned mathematics, religion, Greek,Latin, and public speaking. • Although no statewide public school system existed, some Southerncities established public schools. By the mid-1800s there werehundreds of public schools operating in North Carolina. Kentuckyhad also established a funding system for public schools.

18. How Did the South Compare to the North? • Despite the growth in education, the South lagged behind the Northin literacy. • Because homes were far apart, it was a great hardship forpeople to send their children to school. • Some Southerners alsobelieved that education was a private matter and that the stateshould not fund education.

19. Discussion Question • Why was it difficult for Southern children to attend school? • (Althoughthe South was heavily populated, there were few people per square mile. Thiscreated great distances between people and school, so children would need totravel far to attend school.)

20. Section 2 Review pg. 431 • 1. List two differences between yeoman and plantation owners. • 2. Explain why some free African Americans might own slaves. • 4. Describe the life of free African Americans in Southern cities.