Introduction

What was the Old South? The answer is as varied as the geography and people of the region. The stately Georgian mansions of tidewater Virginia and the Greek revival homes of the Carolina planters were rarely replicated on the raw new plantations in the Deep South. As the five southerners profiled in Chapter 13 testify, the character of the Old South was multifaceted. The Red River Texan is as different from his South Carolinian counterpart as the wage-earning slaves are from the runaway slave. Yet despite the many faces of the South, one institution, slavery, had the power to cobble together many diverse elements in its defense. For the privileged minority of slave owners with at least fifty slaves, the "peculiar institution" represented a labor system essential to running a complex, agriculturally-based enterprise. As entrepreneurs, southern planters produced 75% of the world's cotton. Such men were just as tied to the market economy and the quest for status and success as their northern factory owner counterparts. The majority of southerners, the yeoman farmers, opposed emancipation out of racism and for fear of competition with free blacks; for impoverished whites, freedom was their only claim to status. By 1840 southerners had closed ranks in defense of slavery. 

The Web activities begin with a proslavery cartoon portraying the paternalist image crafted by southern apologists. They focus on white southern culture and the development of the pro-slavery argument, then shift to slave culture. The research links follow the same topics.

Web Activities

1.  By 1840 southerners had constructed an elaborate defense of slavery. Examine the proslavery cartoon above. Identify key components that contrast the life of the working-class white in England with the black slave in America. What is the intended message? Who is the intended audience? Keep in mind the image of slavery promoted by southern pro-slavery leaders as you examine the writings of three pro-slavery advocates. 

• George Fitzhugh's pro-slavery argument became part of white supremacy indoctrination. His works urged southerners to take the moral high ground, to emphasize the logic of the slave labor system. First go to Sociology for the South, or, The Failure of Free Society. Click on "HTML file," then go to chapter V, p. 82. What evidence does Fitzhugh use to make a case that slaves are better off in America than in Africa? How can he insist "The Southerner is the negro's friend" (95)? Turn next to Fitzhugh's other controversial work, Cannibals All! or, Slaves Without Masters. Click on "HTML file." Read chapter 1, "The Universal Trade" (click on the link for page 25). What is the "White Slave Trade"? How does Fitzhugh justify his statement, "The negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in the world" (29)? Why does Fitzhugh insist that the free laborer is "more of a slave than the Negro"? 
• Next go to The Planter: or, Thirteen Years in the South by a Northern Man by David Brown. Scroll down and read the advertisement. How does Brown propose to "arrest the progress of error" of abolitionist writing? 
• Finally, read the preface of Caroline Lee Hentz's fictional defense of slavery, The Planter's Northern Bride. How does Lee portray "colored people"? Do you support Hentz's claim that her "motives are disinterested" (page X)? What differences do you see in Hentz's defense of slavery and Fitzhugh's? Do you think these differences can be attributed to gender, or do they only reflect the difference between fiction and non-fiction?
• How effectively do you think southerners defended slavery? In what ways is each of these arguments designed to preserve white solidarity? Compare the pro-slavery argument with the abolitionist argument in the Chapter 12 Web activities.

2.  The "peculiar institution" was a labor system vigorously defended by white southerners; but within its structure, enslaved Americans developed their own culture. Your task in this activity is to explore the meaning of slavery for African Americans, first by reviewing religious life under slavery, then by examining online documents relating to the everyday life of slaves. As you visit the following sites think about the ways slaves shaped their own culture. How was it both different from, and yet a mirror image of white culture?

• Read African-American Religion in the Nineteenth Century. Laurie Maffly-Kipp examines religious revivalism and the response of the southern slave community. Read the first section. What elements comprise the "invisible institution"? Scroll down to "Historians Debate." What arguments structure the debate? Maffly-Kipp asks, "Was evangelical religion ultimately a positive thing for blacks, both southern and northern, or did it only help to make them obedient in the face of white oppression?" Based on evidence found in her summary essay, how do you think her question is best answered?
• According to "The Emergence of the African American Church" what was the "central and defining event in the development of Afro-Christianity"?
• For further insight on the development of "Afro-Christianity" read The Religion of the Slaves by Terry Matthews. What elements does Matthews conclude were essential to religious life? 
• Explore materials relating to everyday life at "Slave Voices From The Special Collections Library," Duke University. 
• Read the Introduction, then go to Black Southerners in the Old South: The Slave Community. Examine documents 18-26 (magnify the images). Note item 23: "Weight Negro Cotton made in 1858." What do these documents tell you about the internal slave economy? How did slaves, as well as their masters, derive income from cotton? 
• Go to Vilet Lester Letter, 1857. Scroll down to read about Vilet Lester then go to Lester's letter to Miss Patsey Patterson, August 29, 1857. 
• See also Hannah Valentine and Lethe Jackson Slave Letters, 1837-1838. Scroll down to learn about the authors and the context of the letters. Then read Valentine's and Jackson's letters to their mistresses and other slave family members. 
• How does this collection illuminate the daily lives of slaves? What do the letters reveal about domestic life and the slave/master relationship?

3.  Did slaves resist the "peculiar institution"? Resistance took many forms, from the famous slave revolt led by Nat Turner in 1831 to less dramatic abuses of the masters' property. How did white southerners react to Turner's revolt? Among southern slave communities did a sense of the futility of open revolt contribute to forging slave culture? How much do you think the southern response to Turner's revolt helped to shape regional identity and a sense of psychological unity? Tour the following sites to find answers. 

• Read the overview People & Events Nat Turner's Rebellion, 1831, then go to The Confessions of Nat Turner. Turner dictated his remarkable "Confession" to physician Thomas R. Gray while imprisoned. Review the first six sections, taking time to think about Turner's visions, his actions, and the verdict of the court. 
• Harriet Ann Jacobs, born into slavery in North Carolina, eventually escaped to the North. Read her account in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl describing circumstances in Edenton, North Carolina, following the rebellion. 
• Read the coverage of events in The Richmond Enquirer. Note the praise for slaves who assisted in apprehending the "brigands." 
• The revolt prompted extended debate in the Virginia Assembly. Although there was some discussion of ending slavery, in response to letters such as Norborne E. Sutton to Governor John Floyd, more laws were enacted limiting activities of African Americans, both free and enslaved. 
• Finally, think about the relationship of events to the abolitionist movement explored in Chapter 12 Web activities. Turner's revolt occurred soon after David Walker's Appeal and was followed by the appearance of the first issue of William Lloyd Garrison's theLiberator. 

Additional Research Links

The White South 

• Cotton was not the only source of southern agricultural wealth. Sugar at LSU is a brief history of sugar production in Louisiana. Sponsored by Louisiana State University in honor of the 200th anniversary of commercial sugar production in the state, the site contains treatments of early sugar plantations, statistics on nineteenth century sugar revenues, and the effect of the Civil War on the industry. Photographs and official documents are included, supplemented by explanatory text. 
• Rice was another component of antebellum southern economy. See When Rice Was King, part of the "Teaching with Historic Places" program of the National Park Service.
• The expansion of the cotton kingdom was dependent on international trade. View the etching The Levee at New Orleans (magnify the image) of steamboats and slaves off-loading cotton in the Illustrated London News. Note the long line of smaller steamboats bringing cotton to New Orleans for subsequent shipment to English ports, principally Liverpool. 
• Stephen R. Haynes' article, "Original Dishonor: Noah's Curse and the Southern Defense of Slavery,"  in The Journal of Southern Religion examines the way American proslavery intellectuals read the biblical text "as containing both the origin and justification for African slavery." Haynes' argues that Southern justification can be better comprehended when intertwined with the culture of honor. 

The Peculiar Institution

• Third Person, First Person: Slave Voices is a library of manuscripts and broadsides that shed light on the social life of slavery. Created by the Special Collections Library at Duke University, the exhibit includes records from southern plantations and broadsides calling for the return of runaway slaves. 
• "North American Slave Narratives, Beginnings to 1920" from the Documenting the American South Collection, the University of North Carolina, documents the individual and collective story of the African American struggle for freedom and human rights. William L. Andrews' essay, An Introduction to the Slave Narrative, stresses the importance of slave narratives as key historical testimony. 
• For an overview of resistance documents go to Slavery -- The Peculiar Institution at the African American Odyssey exhibit at the Library of Congress. 
• Porte Crayon (David Strothers), an illustrator for Harper's Weekly, traveled throughout the Shenandoah Valley in the antebellum period. He made "local color drawings" for Virginia Illustrated. Click on thumbnail image to bring up a larger illustration. Both images and the complete text of The Adventures of Porte Crayon and his Cousins provide insights on white views of everyday life in southern slave culture.

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Slave Revolts in Latin America

• Slaves resisted bondage more frequently in Latin America than in the United States where revolts were rare. The 1733 St. John Revolt, where former slaves held the island for six months, is one of the most successful revolts in Caribbean history. 
• Inspired by the American and French Revolution, slave resistance in France's sugar-rich colony, Saint Domingue, succeeded under the leadership of Toussaint L'Ouverture. Read "The Haitian Revolution" by Franklin W. Knight in The American Historical Review, February 2000.