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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.
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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. • Cotton -fueled the southern economy and drove both white and slave populations steadily westward and southward. • cotton prices boomed on the world market • Indian tribes were forcibly removed • Single-crop agriculture exhausted the soil • 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. • 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. • 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. • 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. • At the top of the class structure of the Old South were slaveowners. • The refined plantation society of the Tidewater • 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. • Plantations were complex business operations managed by the master. • 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 • 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 • 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. • 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.
Describe slave culture and how it helped slaves bear up under the pressures of slavery. • cope with the pressures of bondage. • preserve a sense of family, • 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, • 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 • 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. • 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.
