The typical plantation belt yeoman in the old south aspired to

A slave auction in Virginia. 1861

. . . whatever accidents or misfortunes might attend my flight nothing could

be worse than what threatened my stay.

— Hannah Crafts

►

sold at blie

auction, at Spring Wit, n the

County of Ilenwstead, on a

credit a VW eiVe altatihS, 09

Vri

day Ow *Sat day of this pres-

ent mootta, 13 yonng and v

sable 03*N-es, consisting o 4aperiee Ilien &VW , beto 12 and 1 years of

age,

Walla about 43 years vv

If;;U:X,' "' 0,." "' ' '" ''' '

VON IN

1 0 THE SOUTH AND SLAVERY

179os-185os

HOW DID attitudes in the South toward slavery change after the invention

of the cotton gin?

WHAT WA S life like for the typical slave in the American South?

SLAVE COLLAR R r

S Hmozvn VIRGIN LAVE

MARKET

WHAT ROLE did religion play in African American slave communities?

WHAT WERE the values of yeoman farmers?

WHO MADE up the planter elite?

WHAT PROSLAVERY arguments were developed in the first half

of the nineteenth century?

240 CHAPTER 10 THE SOUTH AND SLAVERY, 179os-185os

AMERICAN COMMUNI{T I

ES Cotton Communities in the Old Southwest

IN 1834, SAMUEL TOWNES OF SOUTH CAROLINA CAUGHT "ALABAMA Fever." Restive under what seemed to him excessive demands from his large and well-connected family, Samuel rebelled by marrying a woman of whom his family disapproved and moving with her and his slaves to Perry County, Alabama, a newly opened part of the Old Southwest suitable for growing cotton. There he practiced law in the village of Marion, bought a planta- tion on the banks of the Cahaba River, and acquired ten to fif- teen more slaves. Almost all of Samuel's new possessions were bought on credit. Samuel's desire for wealth caused him to drive his slaves very hard. Always convinced that they were malinger- ing, he demanded that his overseer "whip them like the devil" to pick more cotton.

The Panic of 1837 devastated Samuel's ambitions. As the price of cotton fell to 7 cents a pound (from 15 cents in 1836), banks demanded repayment of their generous loans. Samuel sold some slaves, and rented out the labor of others, but he was forced to ask for loans from the family he had been so eager to escape. In 1844 his plantation was sold at auction. Three years later, his health failed, and he and his wife, Joanna, had no choice but to return to South Carolina and the charity of kinfolk.

The rapid westward expansion of cotton cultivation exposed the undeveloped state of community formation among the southern elite. The plantation form of agriculture, which had been the rule in the South since its earliest days, meant that cities were few and community institutions like churches and schools were rare. Slave- owning families depended almost entirely on kinship networks for assistance (and the obligations that Samuel Townes wished to avoid) and for sociability. Families who moved west frequently found themselves lost without their customary family connections. Wider community connections and support lagged behind the pursuit of profits to be made

from cotton. What of the slaves that Samuel brought with him? Once

part of a larger Townes family group in South Carolina, the slaves that Samuel owned were separated from their kinfolk perma- nently and had to adjust to living with a number of newly pur- chased slaves in Alabama. Most of the new slaves were bought as individuals and were usually still in their teens or even younger. Young male slaves were favored for the backbreaking work of cut-

ting trees and clearing land for cultivation. Sometimes owners worked side by side with their workers at this initial stage. But gen- erally, uniformity and strict discipline were the rule on cotton plantations. Owners eager to clear land rapidly and make quick profits often drove the clearing crews at an unmerciful pace. And, as Samuel Townes had, they attempted to impose strict discipline and a rapid pace on the work gangs that planted, hoed, and har- vested cotton. Slaves from other parts of the South, used to more individual and less intense work, hated the cotton regime and most of all hated the overseers who enforced it.

Only long-practiced African American community-building strategies saved these young transported slaves—some called it a "Second Middle Passage"—from complete isolation. Beginning in the earliest days of slavery, Africans from many different tribes built their own communities by using the language of kinship (for example, "brother," "sister," "uncle," "aunt," and "child") to encompass everyone in new imagined families. On one hand, the cultivation of cotton required many workers, thus creating the conditions necessary for large slave communities in the Old Southwest. On the other hand, because the price of cotton was unstable, probably many shared the experience of the Townes slaves, who were sold again when the plantation failed.

Thus, the new land in the Old Southwest that appeared to offer so much opportunity for owners

bred tensions caused by forcible sale and migra- tion, by the organization and pace of cotton cultivation, and by the owners' often violent efforts to control their slaves in a new region where community bonds were unde-

veloped. For planters and slaves alike, migra- tion broke long-standing family ties that were

the most common form of community through- out the South. The irony is that African Americans,

who were the most cruelly affected, knew better how to build new communities than did their privileged owners.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, world demand for cotton transformed the South, promoting rapid expansion and unprecedented prosperity. But it also tied the South to a slave system that was inherently unstable and violent. Although southern slave owners frequently talked about their plantations as communities and their slaves as family, the slave system was not one community but two with the strengths of the slave com- munity largely invisible to the owners.

HOW DID attitudes in the South

toward slavery change after the

invention of the cotton gin?

myhistcOylab Review Summary

IMAGE KEY for pages 238-239

a. A chain used to tie gangs of slaves. b. "The Shadow" plantation of Louisiana. c. A slave auction in Virginia, 1861. d. A whip of coiled rope used on slaves. e. An auction of eight black slaves. f. Mature cotton bolls on the stem of a

plant. g. Slaves carry sacks of cotton on their

heads on a South Carolina plantation field.

h. A slave collar with an attached tag from the slave market in Richmond, Virginia.

i. African American worshippers in a sketch by Joseph Becker.

j. A log cabin in New Braunfels, Texas in a painting by Carl G. von Iwonski.

k. Colonel and Mrs. James A. Whiteside in a James Cameron painting.

I. A proslavery cartoon, 1841.

THE SOUTH AND SLAVERY, 17gos-185os CHAPTER 10 24 1

KING COTTON AND SOUTHERN EXPANSION

S Lavery had long dominated southern life. African American slaves grew the great export crops of the colonial period—tobacco, rice, and indigo—on which slave owners' fortunes were made, and their presence shaped south-

ern society and culture (see Chapter 4). Briefly, in the early days of American independence, the slave system waned, only to be revived by the immense prof- itability of cotton in a newly industrializing world. Cotton became the dominant crop in a rapidly expanding South that more than doubled in size (see Map 10.1). The overwhelming economic success of cotton and of the slave system on which it depended created a distinctive regional culture quite different from that devel- oping in the North.

COTTON AND EXPANSION INTO THE OLD SOUTHWEST

Short-staple cotton had long been recognized as a crop ideally suited to south- ern soils and growing conditions. But it had one major drawback: the seeds were so difficult to remove from the lint that it took an entire day to hand-clean a single pound of cotton. The invention in 1793 that made cotton growing prof- itable was the result of collaboration between a young Northerner named Eli Whitney and Catherine Greene, a South Carolina plantation owner. Whitney built a prototype cotton engine, dubbed "gin" for short, a simple device con- sisting of a hand-cranked cylinder with teeth that tore the lint away from the seeds. At Greene's suggestion, the teeth were made of wire. With the cotton gin, it was possible to clean more than fifty pounds of cotton a day. Soon large and small planters in the inland regions of Georgia and South Carolina had begun to grow cotton. By 1811, this area was producing 60 million pounds of cotton a year and exporting most of it to England.

Other areas of the South quickly followed South Carolina and Georgia into cotton production. New land was needed because cotton growing rapidly depleted the soil. The profits to be made from cotton growing drew a rush of southern farmers into the so-called black belt—an area stretching through west- ern Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi that was blessed with exceptionally fertile soil. Following the War of 1812, Southerners were seized by "Alabama Fever." In one of the swiftest migrations in American history, white Southerners and their slaves flooded into western Georgia and the areas that would become Alabama and Mississippi (the Old Southwest). On this frontier, African American pio- neers (albeit involuntary ones) cleared the forests, drained the swamps, broke the ground, built houses and barns, and planted the first crops.

Like the simultaneous expansion into the Old Northwest, settlement of the Old Southwest took place at the expense of the region's Indian population (see Chapter 9). Beginning with the defeat of the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend in 1814 and ending with the Cherokee forced migration along the "Trail of Tears" in 1838, the Five Civilized Tribes—the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Semi- noles—were forced to give up their lands and move to Indian Territory (see

Chapter 11). Following the "Alabama Fever" of 1816-20, several later surges of southern

expansion (1832-38, and again in the mid-1850s) carried cotton planting over the Mississippi River into Louisiana and deep into Texas. In the minds of the mobile, enterprising Southerners who sought their fortunes in the West, cotton profits and expansion went hand in hand. But the expansion of cotton meant the

expansion of slavery.

MISSOURI KENTUCKY

ct. TENNESSEE ARKANSAS

NORTH CAROLINA

SOUTH CAROLINA

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

Gulf of Mexico

MICHIGAN

CONNECTICUT

OHIO INDIANA

ILLINOIS UNORGANIZED

TERRITORY

NEW YORK

PENNSYLVANIA NEW JERSEY

DELAWARE

MARYLAND VIRGINIA

Original states

By 1821

By 1850

I I

242 CHAPTER 10 THE SOUTH AND SLAVERY, 179os-185os

it. MAP EXPLORATION 1, To explore an interactive version of this map, go to http://www.prenhall.com/faraghertIc/map10.1

MAP 10.1 The South Expands, 1790-1850 This map shows the dramatic effect cotton production had on southern expansion. From the original six states of 1790, westward expansion, fueled by the search for new cotton

lands, added another six states by 1821 and three more by 1850.

WHY WAS cotton production especially suited to slave labor?

SLAVERY THE MAINSPRING—AGAIN

Industrial Revolution Revolution in the means and organization of production.

The export of cotton from the South was the dynamic force in the developing Amer- ican economy in the 1790-1840 period. Just as the international slave trade had been the dynamic force in the Atlantic economy of the eighteenth century (see Chapter 4), southern slavery financed northern industrial development in the nine- teenth century.

The rapid growth of cotton production was an international phenomenon. The insatiable demand for cotton was a result of the technological and social changes that we know today as the Industrial Revolution. Beginning early in the eighteenth century, a series of inventions resulted in the mechanized spinning and weaving of cloth in the world's first factories in the north of England. The abil- ity of these factories to produce unprecedented amounts of cotton cloth revolu- tionized the world economy. The invention of the cotton gin came at just the right time. British textile manufacturers were eager to buy all the cotton that the South could produce. By the time of the Civil War, cotton accounted for almost 60 per-

cent of American exports. The connection between southern slavery and northern industry was very

direct. Most mercantile services associated with the cotton trade (insurance,

QUICK REVIEW

The Economics of Slavery

♦ Worldwide demand for cotton supported slavery.

• Export of cotton a dynamic part of American economy.

♦ Northern industry directly con- nected to slavery.

vi 7-6 Benjamin Banneker, An African American Calls for an End to Slavery (1791)

THE SOUTH AND SLAVERY, 17gos- 185os CHAPTER 10

243

This 1855 illustration of black stevedores loading heavy bales of cotton onto waiting steamboats in New Orleans is an example of the South's dependence on cotton and the slave labor that produced it.

for example) were in northern hands and, significantly, so was shipping. This economic structure was not new. In colonial times, New England ships domi- nated the African slave trade. Some New England families invested some of their profits in the new technology of textile manufacturing in the 1790s. Other merchants made their money from cotton shipping and brokerage. Thus, as cotton boomed, it provided capital for the new factories of the North (see Chapter 12).

A SLAVE SOCIETY IN A CHANGING WORLD

In the flush of freedom following the American Revolution, all the northern states abolished slavery or passed laws for gradual emancipation, and a number of slave owners in the Upper South freed their slaves (see Chapter 7). On January 1, 1808, the earliest date permitted by the Constitution, a bill to abolish the importation of slaves became law. Nevertheless, southern legislatures were unwilling to write steps toward emancipation into law, preferring to depend on the charity of indi- vidual slave owners.

But attitudes toward slavery rapidly changed in the south following the inven- tion of the cotton gin in 1793 and the realization of the riches to be made from cotton. White Southerners believed that only African slaves could be forced to work day after day, year after year, at the rapid and brutal pace required in the cot- ton fields of large plantations in the steamy southern summer. As the production of cotton climbed higher every year in response to a seemingly inexhaustible inter- national demand, so too did the demand for slaves and the conviction of South- erners that slavery was an economic necessity.

As had been true since colonial times, the centrality of slavery to the econ- omy and the need to keep slaves under firm control required the South to become a slave society, rather than merely a society with slaves, as had been the case in the North. What this meant was that one particular form of social relationship, that of master and slave (one dominant, the other subordinate), became the model for all relationships, including personal interactions between white husbands and wives as well as interactions in politics and at work.

At a time when the North was experiencing the greatest spurt of urban growth in the nation's history (see Chapter 13), most of the South remained rural: less than 3 percent of Mississippi's population lived in cities of more than 2,500 residents, and only 10 percent of Virginia's did. The agrarian ideal, bolstered by

PENNSYLVANIA NEW JERSEY

INDIANA OHIO

ILLINOIS Washington DC :'--- DELAWARE

`MARYLAND VIRCiIhJIA

TENNESSEE. Columbia

Augusta • SOUTH CAROLINA MISSISSIPPI Macon • •Charleston

ALABAMA GEORGIA Savannah

NORTH CAROLINA

1860

I I Area of cotton production Distribution of slave population

1820

I I Area of cotton production Distribution of slave population

LOUISIANA •

Baton Rouge• • Mobile -New Orleans

ATLANTIC

OCEAN FLORIDA

0,- NORTH

INDIAN ARKANSAS k TENNESSEE CAROLINA

Columbia TERRITORY . Augusta SOUTH CAROLINA

94141551PM Macon. • •Charleston

MA • Savannah LOUISIANA :-:--: GEORGIA

Baton Rouge.,. Mobile New Orleans

Gulf of Mexico

Gulf of Mexico

PENNSYLVANIA - -NEW

JERSEY

INDIANA OHIO

ILLINOIS Washington DC - DELAWARE

MARYLAND

MISSOURI KENTUCKY

VIRGINIA

ATLANTIC FLORIDA

OCEAN

KANSAS

TERRITORY

MISSOURI •

TERRITORY

ARKANSAS

TERRITORY

In New Orleans, in the streets outside large slave pens near the French Quarter, thousands of slaves were displayed and sold each year. Dressed in new clothes provided by the traders and exhorted by the traders to walk, run, and other-

wise show their stamina, slaves were presented to buyers. For

their part, suspicious buyers, unsure that traders and slaves themselves were truthful, poked, prodded, and frequently stripped male and female slaves to be sure they were as healthy as the traders claimed.

Although popular stereotype portrayed slave traders as unscrupulous outsiders who persuaded kind and reluctant masters to sell their slaves, the historical truth is

WHY WAS the increasing dominance of cotton cultiva- tion in the Lower South accompanied by a growing con-

centration of slaves in that region?

244 CHAPTER 10 THE SOUTH AND SLAVERY, 179os- 185os

t*" KENTUCKY

MAP 10.2 Cotton Production and the Slave Population, 1820-60 In the forty years from 1820 to 1860, cotton production grew dramatically in both quantity

and extent. Rapid westward expansion meant that by 1860 cotton pro-

duction was concentrated in the black belt (so called for its rich soils) in

the Lower South. As cotton production moved west and south, so did the

enslaved African American population that produced it, causing a dra-

matic rise in the internal slave trade.

Sam Bowers Hilliard, Atlas of Antebellum Southern Agriculture (Baton Rouge: Lousiana State

University Press, 1984).

the cotton boom, encouraged the antiurban and anticom- mercial sentiments of many white Southerners. The South also lagged behind the North in industrialization and in canals and railroads (see Chapter 12). In 1860, only 15 per- cent of the nation's factories were located in the South.

Other changes, however, could not be so easily ignored. Nationwide, the slave states were losing their political domi- nance because their population was not keeping pace with that of the North. Equally alarming, outside the South, anti- slavery sentiment was growing rapidly. Southerners felt directly threatened by growing abolitionist sentiment in the North and by the 1834 action of the British government elim- inating slavery on the sugar plantations of the West Indies. The South felt increasingly hemmed in by northern opposi- tion to the expansion of slavery.

THE INTERNAL SLAVE TRADE

The cotton boom caused a huge increase in the domestic slave trade. Plantation owners in the Upper South (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Virginia, and Tennessee) sold their slaves to meet the demand for labor in the new and expand- ing cotton-growing regions of the Old Southwest. Cumula- tively, between 1820 and 1860, nearly 50 percent of the slave population of the Upper South took part against their will in southern expansion (see Map 10.2). More slaves—an esti- mated 1 million—were uprooted by this internal slave trade and enforced migration in the early nineteenth century than were brought to North America during the entire time the international slave trade was legal (see Chapter 4).

Purchased by slave traders from owners in the Upper South, slaves were gathered together in notorious "slave pens" in places like Richmond and Charleston and then moved south by train or boat. Often slaves moved on foot, chained together in groups of fifty or more known as "cof- fles." Chained slaves in coffles were a common sight on southern roads and one difficult to reconcile with the notion

of slavery as a benevolent institution. Arriving at a central

market in the Lower South like Natchez, New Orleans, or

Mobile, the slaves, after being carefully inspected by poten- tial buyers, were sold at auction to the highest bidder (see Map 10.3).

St. Petersburg

Mobile.

Vicksburg

LOUISIANA Jackson atchez•

Baton Rouge

New Orleans

PENNSYLVANIA _NEWJERSEY

Baltimore Washington D.C. 0

Alexandria/9 SY--- DELAWARE VIRGINIA 1 --MARYLAND

°Richmond

• Norfolk \

NORT CAROLINA • Salisbury

WilTington

SOUTH CAROLINA

Charleston

NEBRASKA IOWA TERRITORY

KANSAS TERRITORY

MISSOURI

z. ILLINOIS

St. Louis'

INDIAN TERRITORY

Memphis°

ARKANSAS

GEORGIA

Montgomery Savannah

Pensacola

FLORIDA

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

Gulf of Mexico

-4-- Slave trade route

0 Major trading center

• Trading center Havana „

CUBA

TEXAS

San Antonio

Galveston

OHIO INDIANA

Ohio R.

THE SOUTH AND SLAVERY, 179os-185os CHAPTER 10

vaito 245

MAP 10.3

Internal Slave Trade, 1820-60 Between 1820 and 1860, nearly 50 percent of the slave population of the Upper South was sold to labor on the cotton plantations of the Lower South. This map shows the various routes by which they were "sold down the river," shipped by boat or marched south.

Historical Atlas of the United States (Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 1988).

WHAT AGRIECULTURAL trends help explain the relative decline of slavery in the Upper South?

much harsher. Traders, far from being shunned by slave-owning society, were often respected community members. Similarly, the sheer scale of the slave trade makes it impossible to believe that slave owners only reluctantly parted with their slaves at times of economic distress. Instead, it is clear that many owners sold slaves and sep- arated slave families not out of necessity but to increase their profits. The sheer size and profitability of the internal slave trade made a mockery of southern claims for the benevolence of the slave system.

THE AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY

S urely no group in American history has faced a harder job of community building than the black people of the antebellum South. Living in intimate, daily contact with their oppressors, African Americans nevertheless created

an enduring culture of their own, a culture that had far-reaching and lasting influ- ence on all of southern life and American society as a whole (see Chapter 4).

WHAT WAS life like for the typical

slave in the American South?

myhistchlab Review Summary

246 'wt$fr114.

CHAPTER 10 THE SOUTH AND SLAVERY, 179os-185os

This engraving from Harper's Weekly

shows slaves, dressed in new clothing,

lined up outside a New Orleans slave pen for inspection by potential buyers before the actual auction began. They were often threatened with punishment if they did not present a good appear- ance and manner that would fetch a high price.

THE MATURE AMERICAN SLAVE SYSTEM

On January 1, 1808, the United States ended its participation in the international slave trade. Although a small number of slaves continued to be smuggled in from Africa, the growth of the slave labor force depended primarily on natural increase—that is, through births within the slave population. The slave population, estimated at 700,000 in 1790, grew to more than 4 million in 1860. A distinctive African American slave community, which had first emerged in the eighteenth century (see Chapter 4) , expanded dramatically in the early years of the nineteenth century. This commu- nity was as much shaped by King Cotton as was the white South.

Cotton growing concentrated slaves on plantations, in contrast to the more dis- persed distribution on smaller farms in earlier generations. The size of cotton plan- tations fostered the growth of slave communities. Over half of all slaves lived on plantations with twenty or more other slaves, and others, on smaller farms, had links with slaves on nearby properties. Urban slaves were able to make and sustain so many secret contacts with other African Americans in cities or towns that slave own- ers wondered whether slave discipline could be maintained in urban settings. There can be no question that the bonds among African Americans were what sustained them during the years of slavery.

In law, slaves were property, to be bought, sold, rented, worked, and otherwise used (but not abused or killed) as the owner saw fit. But slaves were also human beings, with feelings, needs, and hopes. Even though most white Southerners believed black people to be members of an inferior, childish race, all but the most brutal masters acknowledged the humanity of their slaves. White masters learned to live with the two key institutions of African American community life: the family and the African Amer- ican church, and in their turn slaves learned, however painfully, to survive slavery.

THE GROWTH OF THE SLAVE COMMUNITY

Of all the New World slave societies, the one that existed in the American South was the only one that grew by natural increase rather than through the constant importation of captured Africans. This fact alone made the African American community of the South different from the slave societies of Cuba, the Caribbean

QUICK REVIEW

Life and Death

♦ Mortality rate of slave children under five was twice that of white counterparts.

♦ Infectious diseases were endemic in the South.

♦ Malnutrition and lack of basic sanitation took a high toll on slaves.

Manumission The freeing of a slave.

THE SOUTH AND SLAVERY, 179os-185os CHAPTER 10 247

islands, and Brazil. In order to understand, we must examine the circumstances of survival and growth.

The growth of the African American slave population was not due to better treatment than in other New World slave societies, but to the higher fertility of African American women, who in 1808 (the year the international slave trade ended) had a crude birthrate of 35 to 40, causing a 2.2 percent yearly population growth. This was still below the fertility rate of white women, who had a crude birthrate of 55 and a 2.9 percent annual population growth. But by midcentury, the white rate had dropped to 1.99 percent, while the black rate remained high. African American slave women adopted the white practice of breastfeeding for only one year, and on average gave birth to six or eight children at year-and-a-half intervals. But they also suffered from the contradictory demands of slave owners, who wanted them to work hard while still having children, for every slave baby increased the wealth of the owners.

As a result, because pregnant black women were inadequately nourished, worked too hard, or were too frequently pregnant, mortality rates for slave chil- dren under five were twice those for their white counterparts. At the time, own- ers often accused slave women of smothering their infants by rolling over them when asleep.

Health remained a lifelong issue for slaves. Malaria and infectious diseases such as yellow fever and cholera were endemic in the South. White people as well as black died, as the life expectancy figures for 1850 show: 40 to 43 years for white people and 30 to 33 years for African Americans. Slaves were more at risk because of the cir- cumstances of slave life: poor housing, poor diet, and constant, usually heavy, work. Sickness was chronic: 20 percent or more of the slave labor force on most plantations were sick at any one time.

FROM CRADLE TO GRAVE

Slavery was a lifelong labor system, and the constant and inescapable issue between master and slave was how much work the slave would—or could—be forced to do. Southern white slave owners claimed that by housing, feeding, and clothing their slaves from infancy to death they were acting more humanely than northern

industrialists who employed people only during their working years. But in spite of occasional instances of manumission—the freeing of a slave—the child born of a slave was destined to remain a slave.

Children lived with their parents (or with their mother if the father was a slave on another farm or plantation) in housing provided by the owner. Husband and wife cooperated in loving and sheltering their children and teaching them survival skills. From birth to about age seven, slave children played with one another and with white children, observing and learning how to survive. They saw the penal- ties: black adults, perhaps their own parents, whipped for disobedience; black women, perhaps their own sisters, violated by white men. And they might see one or both parents sold away as punishment or for financial gain. They would also see

signs of white benevolence: special treats for children at holidays, appeals to loy- alty from the master or mistress, perhaps friendship with a white child.

The children would learn slave ways of getting along: apparent acquiescence to white demands; pilfering; malingering, sabotage, and other methods of slow- ing the relentless work pace. But many white Southerners genuinely believed that their slaves were both less intelligent and more loyal than they really were. Fred- erick Douglass, whose fearless leadership of the abolitionist movement made him the most famous African American of his time, wryly noted, As the master stud- ies to keep the slave ignorant, the slave is cunning enough to make the master think he succeeds."

Cotton

Domestic Work

Rice, Sugar, Hemp

Tobacco

Mining, Lumbering, Industry, Construction

Figure 10.1 Distribution of Slave Labor, 1850 I n 1850, 55 percent of all slaves worked in cotton, 10 percent in tobacco, and

another 10 percent in rice, sugar, and

hemp. Ten percent worked in mining,

lumbering, industry, and construction,

and 15 percent worked as domestic ser-

vants. Slave labor was not generally used

to grow corn, the staple crop of the yeo-

man farmer.

248 uisk CHAPTER 10 THE SOUTH AND SLAVERY, 179os-185os Black children had no schooling of any kind: in most of the southern

states, it was against the law to teach a slave to read, although indulgent owners often rewarded their "pet" slaves by teaching them in spite of the law. At age twelve, slaves were considered full grown and put to work in the fields or in their designated occupation.

55% The explosive growth of cotton plantations changed the nature of south- ern slave labor. In 1850, 55 percent of all slaves were engaged in cotton grow- ing. Another 20 percent labored to produce other crops: tobacco (10 percent), rice, sugar, and hemp. About 15 percent of all slaves were domes- tic servants, and the remaining 10 percent worked in mining, lumbering, industry, and construction (see Figure 10.1).

FIELD WORK AND THE GANG SYSTEM

The field workers, 75 percent of all slaves, were most directly affected by the gang labor system employed on cotton plantations (as well as in tobacco and sugar). Cotton was a crop that demanded nearly year-round labor: from planting in April, to constant hoeing and cultivation through June, to a picking season that began in August and lasted until December. Owners

divided their slaves into gangs of twenty to twenty-five, a communal labor pattern reminiscent of parts of Africa, but with a crucial difference— these workers were supervised by overseers with whips. On most plantations, the bell sounded an hour before sunup, and slaves were expected to be on their way to the fields as soon as it was light. Work continued till noon, and after an hour or so for lunch and rest, the slaves worked until nearly dark. In the evening, the women prepared dinner at the cabins and everyone snatched a few hours of unsupervised socializing before bedtime.