People and Communities in a Slave Society: The South, 1830–18601
Chapter 13
People and Communities in a Slave Society:
The South, 1830–1860
Learning Objectives
After you have studied Chapter 13 in your textbook and worked through this study guide chapter, you should be able to:
1.Discuss the similarities and differences between the North and the South in the period from 1830 to 1860.
2.Discuss the arguments advanced by southerners to justify the institution of slavery.
3.Discuss the impact of an expansive, agrarian, slave-based economy on the development of southern society during the first half of the nineteenth century.
4.Discuss the characteristics of the lives of yeoman farmers, landless whites, and free blacks, and explain the value system of each.
5.Discuss the characteristics of the lives of slaveowners, and explain their value system as well as their attitudes toward slavery, blacks, and women.
6.Describe the lives and attitudes of southern women in the first half of the nineteenth century.
7.Explain the conditions under which slaves lived their lives.
8.Examine the development of a distinctive African American culture.
9.Examine the attitudes of blacks toward slavery and toward whites, and discuss the extent and nature of black resistance to the institution of slavery.
10.Discuss the impact of slavery on southern values, customs, and laws.
11.Analyze the relations between planters and yeomen between 1830 and 1860.
Thematic Guide
The theme of Chapter 13 is the economic, institutional, and social development of southern society between 1830 and 1860. Within this context, we consider the belief system that emerged in the South and the impact of this belief system on southern values, customs, and laws.
In Chapter 12 we looked at the development of northern society as a diverse, market-oriented society in the period from 1830 to 1860. Chapter 13 provides an analysis of the very different southern society during this period. Material throughout the chapter elaborates and supports the idea that the growth, change, and prosperity of southern society during those thirty years reinforced the economic, social, and institutional patterns that were already present. At the center of those patterns was the institution of slavery, which, in addition to shaping the South’s economics, values, customs, and laws, also affected the region’s relationship to the nation. The transition of the South from a “society with slaves” to a “slave society” occurred in a Western world that was moving quickly toward a free-market economy based on the free-wage-labor system. Therefore, the South, out of step with the rest of the Western world, assumed a defensive posture toward anyone who spoke even one word against its “peculiar institution.” By doing so, a conservative South hardened into a reactionary South, with slavery as the catalyst.
Although the South was similar to the North in some respects, its commitment to slavery and its rural and agrarian character made it distinct. As southerners began to expand into the Old Southwest, an expansion that gave rise to the Cotton South, slavery became even more firmly entrenched than before. While this expansion gave rise to a new plantation elite, the South remained an agrarian society with a thin population distribution, weak institutions, and few urban centers or factories. Within this society, southerners increasingly offered arguments to defend their slave-based labor system. While some used the Bible and history to defend slavery, others defended the institution in practical economic terms. Furthermore, the defenders of slavery expressed the belief that not only had nature and God ordained the social order, but that any change in society should also be slow and incremental. Although southerners expressed a variety of arguments to defend slavery, a “deep and abiding racism” was at the heart of the proslavery defense.
In “Free Southerners: Farmers, Planters, and Free Blacks,” “Slave Life and Labor,” and “Slave Culture,” we turn to a discussion of the groups that collectively made up southern society: (1) yeoman farmers, (2) landless whites, (3) free blacks, (4) slaveowners, and (5) slaves. Frequent moves characterized the lives of many yeomen, and most yeomen stressed the values of hard work, self-reliance, and personal liberty. Whether striving to become planters or content with their lives as small landowners, most yeomen derived some sense of security from land-ownership. This was not true of landless whites and free blacks.
After briefly discussing the factors that characterized the lives of landless whites and free blacks, we look at the upper end of the class spectrum. The wealthy men who dominated this group held paternalistic attitudes toward both blacks and women. These attitudes, which actually hid harsher racist and sexist assumptions, dominated the master-slave relationship as well as the male-female relationship. From the evidence presented, it is obvious that southern women had fewer choices than their northern counterparts and, therefore, less control over their lives and bodies. Within this context, slavery was, in a sexual sense, a source of trouble to women; but, “in a social system based on the coercion of an entire race, women were not allowed to challenge society’s rules on sexual or racial relations.” Therefore, even though some women may have wanted to speak out against slavery, most were silenced by the men who dominated their lives.
Next we move to a discussion of the general conditions of slave life and the emergence of slave culture. We learn about the slave diet, housing conditions, work routines, and the physical and mental abuses present in the slave system. The theme that runs through the sections on slave life and culture is the variety of ways in which slaves strove to retain a sense of mental independence and self-respect despite their bondage. For all the paternalism of the whites, tension was clearly the determining factor in the relationship between slave and master. Indeed, black culture was born of the refusal of blacks to accept slavery or to give up their struggle against it.
In the last section of the chapter, we see the impact of slavery on the South’s social system, value system, and political system. Despite the distance between slaveowners and nonslaveowners, the South for a variety of reasons had been relatively free of class conflict. But between 1830 and 1860, the hardening of class lines and the widening of the gap between rich and poor began to create more tension between slaveholders and nonslaveholders, tension evidenced in white workers’ protests and in the publication of The Impending Crisis in 1857. Nevertheless, on the eve of the Civil War, slavery seemed to be embedded securely in southern society.
Building Vocabulary
Listed below are important words and terms that you need to know to get the most out of Chapter 13. They are listed in the order in which they occur in the chapter. After carefully looking through the list, refer to a dictionary and jot down the definition of words that you do not know or of which you are unsure.
liquidate
hone
proclivity
opulent
lucre
burgeoning
brogans
noxious
retribution
cadence
sublime
degraded
tenacious
tendril
wanton
docile
precocious
impinge
scrutinize
veritable
deference
discerning
Identification and Significance
After studying Chapter 13 of A People and a Nation, you should be able to identify fully and explain the historical significance of each item listed below.
1.Identify each item in the space provided. Give an explanation or description of the item. Answer the questions who, what, where, and when.
2.Explain the historical significance of each item in the space provided. Establish the historical context in which the item exists. Establish the item as the result of or as the cause of other factors existing in the society under study. Answer this question: What were the political, social, economic, and/or cultural consequences of this item?
Pierce Butler
Identification
Significance
population distribution in the antebellum South
Identification
Significance
proslavery arguments in the antebellum South
Identification
Significance
yeoman farmers
Identification
Significance
Ferdinand L. Steel
Identification
Significance
landless whites of the antebellum South
Identification
Significance
free blacks of the antebellum South
Identification
Significance
slaveholding planters of the antebellum South
Identification
Significance
southern paternalism
Identification
Significance
Paul Carrington Cameron
Identification
Significance
women of the planter class in the antebellum South
Identification
Significance
the ostrich game
Identification
Significance
southern slaves
Identification
Significance
slaves’ work routines
Identification
Significance
the task system
Identification
Significance
violence against slaves in the antebellum South
Identification
Significance
the slave-master relationship
Identification
Significance
slave culture
Identification
Significance
slaves’ religion
Identification
Significance
slaves’ music
Identification
Significance
slave traders
Identification
Significance
the slave family
Identification
Significance
slave resistance and rebellion
Identification
Significance
Denmark Vesey
Identification
Significance
Nat Turner
Identification
Significance
democratic reform movements in the antebellum South
Identification
Significance
white workers’ protests in the antebellum South
Identification
Significance
The Impending Crisis
Identification
Significance
Organizing Information
Chapter 13 in your textbook portrays the South in the thirty years immediately preceding the Civil War as a “slave society.” Slaveholding was a central fact of southern society that had little to do with the percentage of people who owned large numbers of slaves. To see how slaveholding by a minority of southern whites could produce an impact far beyond what the numbers of slaveholders would suggest, complete the following chart. (To get some of the entries for Column One, you may have to have to come up with estimates based on figures you derive from the chapter, what your professor tells you in class, or library research.) In the blocks, enter simple reminders about the nature of slavery’s impact rather than attempting to insert explanations.
Impact of Slavery and Slaveholding on Communitiesin Southern Society, 1830–1860
Areas of Impact
Groups Directly Involved in Slavery / Percentage of Population / Family life/Male-Female Roles and Relation-ships / Political Power and Attitudes and Legal Standing / Racial Attitudes and Relation-ships / Social, Religious, and Moral Values / Cultural Isolation or Integration, Group Cohesive-ness
Wealthy Planters with Many Slaves
Planters with Few Slaves/
Yeoman Farmers
Landless Whites and Frontiers-men
Slave Traders
Free Blacks (including Free Mulattos)
Slaves
Interpreting Information
Using your entries in the chart you filled out to complete the preceding Organizing Information exercise as your guide, find as much specific, relevant information as you can in Chapter 13 and your class notes for short essays on each of the following questions:
1.How did the South’s vastly out-numbered affluent planters manage to turn the South into what has been characterized as “a slave society”?
2.Compare or contrast the impact of slavery as an institution on family life in the region’s white and black communities.
Write mock essays in response to the two questions.
Ideas and Details
Objective 1
1.In the period from 1830 to 1860, southern society was characterized by
a.ethnic tensions associated with the influx of thousands of foreign immigrants.
b.dramatic urban growth.
c.the development of a regional transportation network.
d.low population density.
Objective 2
2.Which of the following may be said to have been at the heart of the South’s proslavery argument?
a.Constitutionalism
b.Paternalism
c.Racism
d.Spiritualism
Objective 3
3.Thousands of southerners migrated into the region west of the Appalachians because of
a.overcrowding in the Old South.
b.unsettled political conditions in the Old South.
c.the attraction of rich, new lands.
d.their objections to the institution of slavery.
Objective 4
4.Free mulattos in the cotton and Gulf regions
a.were afforded the same privileges as whites.
b.faced even harsher treatment than slaves.
c.were sometimes able to gain financial backing from their white fathers.
d.were often overseers on plantations.
Objective 5
5.The attitude of the wealthiest slaveowners toward their slaves can best be described as
a.harsh.
b.loving.
c.paternalistic.
d.accommodating.
Objective 6
6.Which of the following is true of white southern women in the 1830s and 1840s?
a.Those of childbearing age generally bore more children than their counterparts in the North.
b.They were more conscious of family planning than their counterparts in the rest of the nation.
c.They had begun to openly question the morality of slavery.
d.In private and in public they unquestioningly accepted their dependent status.
Objective 6
7.The typical upper-class southern woman
a.was expected to speak her views openly.
b.was educated to think independently.
c.had few duties in the home.
d.was discouraged from challenging society’s rules.
Objective 7
8.One of the characteristics of chattel slavery in the South was
a.a strict division of labor by gender.
b.frequent use of the whip.
c.healthy and sanitary living conditions.
d.a willingness on the part of planters to allow child slaves and elderly slaves to remain idle.
Objective 9
9.The worst evil of American slavery was the
a.physical abuse associated with it.
b.coercion and loss of freedom associated with one person owning another.
c.grueling pace at which slaves were worked.
d.fact that slaves were regarded as expendable.
Objective 9
10.The typical attitude of slaves toward their masters was one of
a.trust.
b.kindness and respect.
c.gratitude.
d.antagonism and resistance.
Objective 8
11.Which of the following is true of slave culture?
a.It contained no remnants of the African past.
b.It helped slaves maintain their sense of identity.
c.It stressed the idea of white superiority.
d.It emphasized loyalty to the master.
Objective 8
12.Many slave songs are characterized by
a.passive acceptance of the human condition.
b.lack of hope for a better future.
c.sudden changes between joy and sorrow.
d.a sense of separation from God.
Objective 8
13.Which of the following is true of slave families?
a.They did not exist.
b.They were discouraged by slaveowners.
c.They were a main source of support among blacks.
d.Sexual division of labor was absent within them.
Objective 10
14.The slave system in the South
a.led to widespread acceptance of an aristocratic value system.
b.caused southerners to value manual labor.
c.caused the emergence of a relatively large and vocal abolitionist group in the South.
d.led to serious and frequent conflicts among southern whites.
Objective 11
15.Hinton Helper’s book The Impending Crisis indicated that
a.the authority of slaveowners was secure in the South.
b.tensions were increasing between slaveowners and those who did not own slaves.
c.those who did not own slaves saw the abolition of slavery as a threat to their independence.
d.free blacks were becoming more vocal in condemning slavery.
Essay Questions
Objective 2
1.Discuss the arguments used by the South to defend and justify the institution of slavery.
Objective 2
2.Discuss the legal/constitutional arguments used by the South to defend slavery against political threats and the “scientific,” sociological, and biblical arguments used to defend and justify slavery against moral threats.
Objective 5
3.Explain the attitude of slaveowners toward their slaves.
Objective 6
4.Discuss the role of planter women within southern society in general and within the marital relationship in particular.
Objective 6
5.Why was slavery a source of trouble for southern women, and what was the southern woman’s perception of the institution of slavery?
Objective 10
6.Discuss the impact of slavery on the southern value system.
Objectives 7, 8, and 9
7.It seems that slaves lived in two worlds—one white and one black. Discuss this dual aspect of slaves’ lives.
Objectives 7, 8, and 9
8.Explain the methods by which slaves were able to preserve their dignity and self-respect within the institution of slavery.
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