Old South As A Slave Society

In Search of the Promised Land: A Slave Family In The Old South by John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger outlines a very unique African American family living in Nashville, TN accounting tales of the trials and tribulations that Sally Thomas, the mother, and her sons had to go through; and how in the end she accomplished her goal. The authors excellently executed the life of this family in an informational and intriguing text by explaining and comparing the different lives and classes of slaves back in that century through Sally and her son’s stories.The detail and the historical pictures in the text help give life and a sense of “realness” and credibility to the situations given to help breathe life into the story, making the story easier to understand and believe.

In contrast to the other three colonies discussed, the institution of slavery in South Carolina was initiated, legalized, and maintained for distinct reasons; the founders of the colony felt that slavery was absolutely necessary for economic prosperity and their unwavering urge to protect the institution at all costs contributed towards the severity of the slave-enforcement acts and codes. By looking at the legislation passed in South Carolina, one can grasp the extent to which slaves were legally stripped of every right imaginable, suffered barbarous treatment, and were attempted to be rendered psychologically and physically powerless--all because of the deep-seated fear of the enslaved population that was instilled within white slave owners and law-makers. In South Carolina, slavery was a horrendous business that was never questioned ethically or legally. The white settlers coming from Barbados--who had already been involved in the slave trade for years--migrated to South Carolina equipped with slaves already accustomed to difficult climate conditions (similar to South Carolina), which made them more pleasurable to slave owners expecting a strong work force. Another unique aspect to South Carolina was the overwhelming black majority in the colony for it is true that, “by 1708, less than twenty years after the decision to move from white indentured labor to black slave labor, the number of blacks in the colony exceeded whites,” (Higginbotham, 1978, pg. 152). Due to the

James Oakes ' book, Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South, is a reflection of slavery and freedom that was closely associated with the ordinary life in the South. The book also hits on points of liberal capitalism that the slave-owner 's had. This book goes into immense detail on liberal capitalism as well as the lack of freedom that the slaves had in the Deep South. "...And this could only mean that southern slavery was defined as the denial of the assumptions of liberal capitalism" (xiii). That in essence makes the slave 's South connection to liberal capitalism closer and way more problematic.

The underlying cause for the Civil War was the North’s realization with laws and books about the South’s inhumane treatment of slaves.

Traditional views of the Antebellum South oftentimes ignore class divides within the American South. African-Americans and Whites are oftentimes viewed as being divided by race with all Whites and African-Americans being equal. However these ideals ignore the seventy-five percent of southerners which did not own slaves and the steep divides between African-American slaves with different roles. Primary sources from authors who experienced the Antebellum South, the American Civil War, and, or Reconstruction alert their audiences to societal divides which existed within each perceived race. Following the abolishment of slavery, economic class divides among whites were mitigated and whites view of African-Americans became standardized. Whites began to only recognize African-American as a rival to their power in all capacities, and as such vilified all African-Americans.

Southern economy was the center of plantation that cultivated cotton. Many the rich started to carve the plantation to earn money by exporting cotton. They needed a lot of labor and slavery was proper to use. The majority of white southerners did not own slaves because planters monopolized the best land. They could not help taking possession of the land that was not proper to cultivate cotton. Most of them earned a living by self-sufficiency even though the slave population was growing: from 697,624 in 1790 to 3,953,760 in 1860.

The South, on the other hand, was highly dependent upon the institution of slavery. It was still primarily an agricultural society that needed as many laborers as possible in order for the plantation owners to make ends meet. According to historian Douglas Harper, “In 1793 came the cotton gin, which brought a 50-fold increase in the average daily output of short-staple cotton, promoted the rapid expansion of a ‘cotton kingdom’ across the Deep South, and made large-scale slavery profitable.” Because of this, the slave became an essential tool to the farmers of the south; more money became invested in slavery rather than in industrial improvements. Based upon the 1860 U.S. Census, there were almost a whopping total of four million slaves in the South alone. In fact, the more slaves an owner had, the more prestige. “Most slave owners owned fewer than five slaves, and only 12 percent of Southerners had twenty or more slaves. Many whites who had no slaves looked with envy upon the wealthy, and to a degree admired them.” This hierarchy had a clearly defined social structure which created distinctions between rich and poor whites as well as racial segregation. This agricultural society and its strict hierarchy only increased the social and racial disparities found in the southern region of the United States.

Africans were always seen as slaves rather than free people. It came to a point were generation from generation, people with African ancestry were legally enslaved for life. European colonists’ even committed to legalizing enslavement of hundreds and thousands of people, but it led to Africans being slaves based on race. Slavery was a big part in Virginia and South Carolina. The history of slavery in Virginia first appeared in 1619 where the Africans were indentured servants. As for South Carolina, majority of their population were African Americans. 65% of their population of about 18,000 people were African American slaves. Upon the social, economic and political development of slavery in Virginia and South Carolina, it impacted their race, class and gender.

Slavery was a big problem in the south in the 1800’s. Slaves were whipped, shot, and tortured in every way possible. They were often auctioned off for money, so they had many different friends and families. Nightjohn was a free slave who had something no one could ever take from him. He had letters. He shared these letters with a female slave named Sarny for some tobacco. Slaves weren’t supposed to know letters, so they had to have private lessons and no one could know.

Introduction - When I think about Slavery, I think about black people and the south, but there is a whole other side to the story of Slavery called the North.In 1860, 476,00 blacks were free. 221,000 of them lived in the North. How Free Were Free Blacks In The North. Blacks in the North were somewhat free in the years just before the Civil War.This can be shown by looking at the three areas of society: Political, Social, and Economical.

In the time just before the Civil War, the United States was one of the most successful nations in the world. The United States had become the world’s leading cotton producing country and had developed industry, which would in the future, surpass that of Great Britain. Also, the United States possessed an advanced railroad and transportation system. However, despite its successes, the United States was becoming increasingly divided. The North and the South had many distinct differences in terms of their social, cultural, and economic characteristics that brought about sectionalism and, eventually, the Civil War.

The decline of slavery in the upper South in the early 19th century can be identified as a profound change which would contribute to the eventual division of the nation. After 1830, the pattern of regional slavery in the South experienced great variations, such that the upper South gradually declined ties with slavery while the lower South distinctively became identified with it. This profound change was brought on by a shift in utilizing free labor rather than slavery to drive economic production in the upper South (Goldfield et. al, p. 285). The climate and geography in states of the upper South overtime proved less

In 1830 slavery was originally sited in the South, where it lives in various structures. African Americans were imprisoned on diminutive farms, big plantations, in cities and towns, within homes, outside the fields, and in industry and transportation. Even if slavery had such a great series of faces, the fundamental concepts were always similar. Slaves were considered possessions, and they were possessions for the reason that they were black. Their rank as property was inflicted by aggression actual or threatened. People, black and white, lived jointly within these limits, and their lives as one took a lot of forms (Solomon, 1855).

Beyond all the horrible treatments that slaves received, enslaved also had to go through master-slave relationships. Women were not just only bought to do housework or labor in the fields, many times they were purchased for male pleasure and reproduction. "Enslaved women were being forced to comply with sexual advances by their masters on a very regular basis" (Sonnen 1). The consequences of resistance often came in the form of physical beatings. This wasn't always the case, even that it was very rare it is stated that some slaves weren’t treated as bad and there was master-slave relationships, where enslaved were treated differently.

Slavery had also been present in New York from the earliest days of Dutch settlement. As their role expanded so did slavery in the city, 30 percent of its laborers were slaves. Most came from different cultures, spoke different languages, and practiced many regions. Slavery allowed different individuals who would never otherwise have encountered, their bond was not kinship, language, or even race, but the impressment of slavery. They eventually came together an created a cohesive culture and community that took many years, and it processed at different rates of speed in different regions.