Chapter Study Outline

  • I. Myth and reality in the Old South
    • A. Southern mythology
      • 1. Gone with the Wind vs. Uncle Tom’s Cabin
    • B. Southern distinctiveness: differences from other U.S. regions
      • 1. Environmental factors
        • a. Geography
        • b. The weather
      • 2. The presence of slavery
      • 3. High percentage of native-born population
      • 4. Architecture, penchant for the military, agrarian ideal
      • 5. Preponderance of farming
    • C. Diversity within the South
      • 1. Lower
        • a. Dependence on cotton production and slave labor
        • b. Led efforts to transport slavery west
      • 2. Middle
        • a. More diversified agricultural economy
        • b. Large areas without slavery
      • 3. Upper (or border)
        • a. Fewer slaves than other parts of the South
        • b. Moral ambivalence about slavery
    • D. Southern religion
      • 1. Dominance of Protestantism
      • 2. Defense of slavery by ministers
    • E. Staple crops and agricultural variety
      • 1. Cotton
        • a. Most profitable cash crop
      • 2. Tobacco in Upper South
        • a. First staple crop of the South
      • 3. Indigo
        • a. Once significant, but vanished during Colonial Era
      • 4. Rice in tidewater area
        • a. Primarily in the Carolinas and Georgia
      • 5. Sugar along the lower Mississippi River
      • 6. Voracious demand for cotton
      • 7. The reality of high proportions of other agricultural products
        • a. Grains, potatoes, and general crops
        • b. Livestock
      • 8. Exhaustion of the soil
    • F. Manufacturing and trade
      • 1. South far less industrialized than the North
      • 2. Factors limiting southern industrial development
        • a. Traditional claims
          • (1) Claims that blacks were unsuited to factory work
          • (2) Contention that aristocratic prestige precluded trade ventures
        • b. Profitability of slaves and cotton reducing motivation for industrialization
  • II. White society in the South
    • A. The planter elite
      • 1. Definition of planter
      • 2. Percentage of the southern population
      • 3. The plantation mistress
    • B. The white middle class
      • 1. Who was middle class?
      • 2. The yeomanry—largest group of whites
      • 3. General style of life
    • C. Poor whites
      • 1. Who were they?
      • 2. The “lazy diseases“
    • D. Honor and violence in the Old South
  • III. Black society in the South
    • A. Growth of slave population and value
      • 1. Development of the institution of slavery
    • B. Free blacks
      • 1. Methods of obtaining freedom
      • 2. Occupations
    • C. Slaves
      • 1. Domestic slave trade replaces foreign slave trade
      • 2. Rural vs. urban slavery
      • 3. The experience of slave women
        • a. Motherhood
        • b. Labor
        • c. Sexual abuse
          • (1) Celia, a slave girl
            • (a) White owner attacked her repeatedly
            • (b) She killed him and was executed
      • 4. The slave family and community
        • a. Lack of legal status for slave marriages
        • b. The importance of the nuclear family
        • c. The significance of the larger African American community
      • 5. African American religion and folklore
        • a. Syncretic nature of the religion
        • b. Value, purpose, and role of religion
      • 6. Slave rebellions
        • a. Challenges of rebellion
        • b. 1811 slave revolt
        • c. Denmark Vesey
        • d. Nat Turner
        • e. Safer forms of resistance
  • IV. The culture of the southern frontier
    • A. The Old Southwest
      • 1. Largely unsettled until 1820s
      • 2. A “land of promise“
    • B. The decision to migrate
      • 1. For men, East had decreasing economic opportunity
      • 2. Women hesitant to move
        • a. White and black women underrepresented among migrants
      • 3. Forced migration for slaves
        • a. Harsh conditions
        • b. Break-up of families
    • C. A masculine culture
      • 1. Violence and alcoholism
      • 2. Abuse of women