Chapter 12

Question 1

Nat Turner

Answer 1

slave led an uprising, belief that solar eclipse was a sign from God to murder slaveholders. Able to read, said slavery was a sin. Lead Virginians wanting to free slaves.

Question 2

Two cash crops?

Answer 2

Rice and cotton

Question 3

Compare coastal south and dynamic south

Answer 3

More people in dynamic south.
King Cotton shaped new south. British textile industry = demand for cotton.
Indian removal = southern expansion

Question 4

Why was cotton King in the south? (compared to sugar)

Answer 4

• perfect conditions for cultivation
• unlike sugar, neither expensive irrigation canals/machinery
• could profit on any scale
• didn’t even have to own slaves

However, slaves and large-scale cotton growing grew together.
slaveholding = increase cotton acreage = increase$

Question 5

Why was growing cotton with corn an advantage?

Answer 5

Planted/harvested before or after. Slaves could harvest corn when not cotton. Fed families and livestock.

Demands for cotton from Britian/NE, price of cotton remained high.
Self-sufficient in corn/hogs, money not drained to pay for food.

Question 6

What are the ties between lower and upper south?

Answer 6

Cash crops: sugar and cotton - Lower south
Tobacco, vegetables, hemp, wheat - Upper south

Social, political, economic factors.

• LS from US
• benefit from 3/5 clause
• stung by abolitionist criticisms of slavery
• profitability of cotton/sugar _ increased value of slaves, encouraged trading

Question 7

How did the North and South diverge?

Answer 7

North:urbanization
South:rural
South, lack of industries. No money. To raise capital to build factories: sell slaves. Doubtful and remote of industrialization.

Public education: nope. Rejected compulsory education. No tax property to support schools. Nope to educating slaves. High white illiteracy.

Question 8

J.D.B. De Bow of New Orleans

Answer 8

Advocated factories. Revive economies of older states = reduce South’s dependency on N manufactured products. South wasn’t backwater.

Question 9

Tredegar Iron Works

Answer 9

Nation’s fourth largest producer of iron products. Contributed to Confederate cause during Civil War. Established after William Gregg toured northern textile mills.

Question 10

Describe southern factories.

Answer 10

Small, produced for nearby markets, closely tied to agriculture. Turned grain into flour, corn into meal, logs into lumber.

Question 11

Name the four groups of the white South’s social structure.

Answer 11

Planters, small slaveholders, yeomen/family farmers, and pine barrens.

Question 12

Describe the qualities of planters and plantation mistresses.

Answer 12

Popular image of the Old South. High degree of division of labor (Bellmead). Large resources = large incomes. Mansions. Not typical planters. Wealth = value of slaves Worry about profitability = search for more/better land, organize for maximum efficiency, self-sufficient for food. Indebtedness. Placed psychological strains/economic burdens on planters and wives. Frequent moves. Lonely women. Trips to cities, entertain guests. Also mistresses and mulattos.

Question 13

Bellmead

Answer 13

a tobacco plantation on James River, agricultural equivalent of a factory village. 100+ slaves. Domestic staff and pasture staff, outdoor artisans, indoor artisans, and field hands.

Question 14

Describe small slaveholders.

Answer 14

Fewer than 20-10 slaves.
Experienced conflicting loyalties and ambitions.
North: Outlook of yeomen/nonslaveholding family farmers. Few slaves, rarely aspired to become large planters.
South: aspired planter status. Link: success = moar slaves. Slaves > profitable crops > more/better land.
Led initial push into cotton belt.

Question 15

Describe Yeomen.

Answer 15

Nonslaveholding family farmers. Largest single group of southern whites. Landowners. Hired salves at harvest time. Mostly subsistence farmers, but some grew crops for market. Controlled landholdings more modest than planters. Tended to be upland, but everywhere too. Minority did not own land. Resided with/worked for landowners. Leading characteristic: self-sufficiency.
Those in low country/delta regions: poor white trash. Upland, respected. Both small slaveholders/yeomen = family farmers. Rather distant transactions, neighborhood farms.

Question 16

Describe the people of the pine barrens.

Answer 16

Independent whites of wooded pine barrens. 10 percent. Squatted, crude cabins, planted corn, grazed hogs/cattle in woods. Neither raised cash crops nor engaged in routine of orderly work that characterized family famers. Appeared lazy and shiftless. Self-reliant, fiercely independent. Men reluctant to hire themselves out as laborers to do “slave”tasks. Women refused to become servants.

Question 17

Describe the social relations in the white south.

Answer 17

Curious mix of aristocratic and democratic, premodern and modern features. Considerable class inequality, but property ownership was widespread. Behavior was kinda bipolar. Dueling intensified.

Question 18

What kind of conflicts and consensus occurred in the White South?

Answer 18

Planters and yeomen. Planters = economic dealings, Whig party (banking and economic development). Yeomen = self-sufficiency and economically independent, Democratic. Underlying political unity reigned despite four different social groups clustered in different regions. Whites didn’t work for other whites = minimize friction.

Question 19

What was the conflict over slavery?

Answer 19

Conflict between slaveholders/nonslaveholders. Nonslaveholder: competition from slave labor depressed wages. Slaveholders = increased porportion of S’s wealth while declining as aproportion of its white population. However, did not create divisions. Why? Some nons, wanted to be slaveholders. Did not want blacks to be equal. Slavery: enforce social subordination of blacks. If free, where go? Emancipation would not merely deprive slaveholders of their property, also jeopardize lives of nonslaveholders.

Question 20

Describe the proslavery argument.

Answer 20

Positive vs necessary evil. Slave of ancients laid basis of western civilization. Contrast to northern factory workers, “wage slaves” discarded vs clothed. Coincided with shift in position on southern churches on slavery. Was immoral. Then compatible with Christianity also necessary.

Question 21

Describe the violence in the south.

Answer 21

Eye gouging, ear biting. Ten times higher than north. Reasons? They had nothing in common with slaves: honor. Feelings of personal pride.

Question 22

Character vs Honor

Answer 22

Character (North): enabled an indivudual to behave in a steady fashion regardless of treatment (prompting of conscience)
Honor (South): insult that was intentional, basis for duel

Question 23

Dueling

Answer 23

Gentlemen dealt with affronts to their HONOR. Complexed code of etiquette governed relations among gentlemen, self-restraint. Most confrontations ended peaceably. Dueling meant recognizing a gentleman as a gentleman.

Question 24

Describe the southern evangelicals and white values.

Answer 24

Honor conflicted with evangelical churches (Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians). Stressed humility/self-restraint. Reached out to subordinate groups: women, slaves, poor. Women remain silent.

Question 25

What determined experience?

Answer 25

Impersonal factors: kind of agriculture, rural or urban, 18th or 19th century.

Question 26

How did slavery change between 1700 and 1830?

Answer 26

1700: young man, few same language. Difficulty partners. Women, malnutrition, few chilkdren.
1830: female as male. Form of english. Numerous slaves.

Question 27

What was the key to change in slavery?

Answer 27

Rise of plantation agriculture in Chesapeake and South Carolina. Easier finding partners. Population grew. Importation banned 1808.

Question 28

What kind of work did slaves do?

Answer 28

On large farm/plantation. 10 fellow servants. Started early in the field. Not labor = milk cows, children, work in field, cook, ironing/washing, care of own children. Never lacked tasks. Ploughing, planting, picking cotton, gathering corn, pulling/burning stalks, cut wood, press cotton, fatten/kill hogs. Dawn to dusk. Slave field hands had it worse.

Question 29

What kind of discipline and punishment were practiced?

Answer 29

Left to white overseers or black drivers vs masters. Necessary priority for submissiveness. Vicious.

Question 30

Contrast field hands and indoor workers.

Answer 30

Indoors gave opportunity for semiskilled/skilled indoor work. Developed skills like blacksmithing, carpentry, cotton gins. Cooks, butlers, dining-room attendants. HIgher rungs on social ladder of slavery.

Question 31

What did masters do in the role of slave marriages?

Answer 31

Encouraged working marriages. Baked wedding cakes or settled martial disputes. However, slavery kept themselves. No recognition nor protection for slave family. Selling family members.