Chapter Overview

This chapter examines the values, social structure, and institutions of the Old South — that is, the South before the Civil War. The Old South was a complex society, as four case studies of southern life make clear. White and black southerners, slaveholders, and yeoman farm families lived together in complicated ways. Yet despite the differences, all shared in a characteristic way of life: an agricultural economy resting on the labor of slaves.

The Social Structure of the Cotton South

Cotton was not the only crop grown in the South, but it was the crop that fueled the southern economy and drove both white and slave populations steadily westward and southward. As cotton prices boomed on the world market and the southern Indian tribes were forcibly removed, Southerners poured into the fresh lands of the deep South. A boom mentality gripped Southerners in the Cotton Kingdom, and cotton quickly became the region's major source of wealth. Single-crop agriculture exhausted the soil, plowing accelerated erosion, and deforestation increased epidemic diseases. At the same time, the upper South became more diversified agriculturally, as exhausted soils encouraged a switch to new crops, especially wheat. These crops required less slave labor, hence 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 and the 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. 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.

The Class Structure of the White South

At the top of the class structure of the Old South were slaveowners. Only one white southerner in four belonged to a slaveowning family, and fewer than 2 percent were members of the wealthy planter class (20 or more slaves). Most slaveowners owned only a few slaves. The refined plantation society of the Tidewater, with its elegant homes and 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. Defenders of slavery stressed the role of paternalism when discussing the relationship between the planter and slaves, but this was 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, who owned their own farm and worked it with their family labor. They formed the middle class of the South. Though yeoman farmers were not poor, they were hurt socially and economically by slavery. Nevertheless they supported the institution out of racism and deeply ingrained fears of emancipation. At the bottom of white society were the poor whites, poverty stricken and scorned by other southern whites. Unlike the more prosperous yeoman farmers, the poor whites resented planters, but they disliked blacks even more intensely and were thus strongly opposed to emancipation.

The Peculiar Institution

Most black southerners lived as slaves — part of what was both a labor system and a caste system based on color. They worked long hours and were subject to strict discipline, including physical punishment with a whip. 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. 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.

Slave Culture

Excluded from white society, slaves developed their own culture that helped them cope with the pressures of bondage. They tried to preserve a sense of family, sang songs that expressed their joy and sorrow as a people, and most important, developed a Christianity of their own that emphasized their dignity as a people and promised them release from the pain of bondage. Slave songs, both spiritual and secular, expressed their innermost feelings, as did 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 were overwhelmingly located in the upper South. Though a majority lived in rural areas, they were the 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.

Southern Society and the Defense of Slavery

As slavery came increasingly under attack, white southerners rallied to defend their "peculiar institution." In 1832, in the aftermath of Nat Turner's rebellion, the Virginia legislature debated the future of slavery, but took no action to end it. Never again would antebellum southerners publicly question slavery. Rather, southern writers developed a series of arguments to defend slavery as a positive good. Southern politicians then felt compelled to defend slavery. In sum, the South had developed a regional identity with some distinct cultural features. But as long as slavery was not a national political issue, the South, with its belief in democracy and white equality and opportunity — and its adherence to Evangelical Protestantism — remained firmly within the American tradition.