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CHAPTER 11
The South, Slavery, and King Cotton,
1800–1860
This chapter discusses the Old South, slavery, and the culture of the southern frontier up to the Secession
Crisis. Included are efforts to sort myth from reality in the life of the Old South, statistics on the economic
development of the South, a description of white society and black slavery in the South, and the condition
of free blacks in both the South and the North. The differing experiences of groups such as white farmers,
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. The Distinctiveness of the Old South
A. A Biracial Culture
B. Conflicting Myths
C. Many Souths
II. The Cotton Kingdom
A. King Cotton
B. The Old Southwest
C. The Southern Frontier
C. The Trade in Slaves
D. Slavery As a Way of Life
E. The Violence of Slavery
F. Urban Slavery
G. Enslaved Women
LECTURE IDEAS
1. A lecture on society in the antebellum South will help students better understand the decisions made
by southern leaders as the country headed toward civil war. Describing a broad cross-section of
2. Show the students how historians differ and how historical interpretations change over time with a
lecture on what is known about the personalities of the enslaved. Start with Stanley Elkins’s classic
Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (1959), which argued that the
3. One interesting way to examine slave culture and its contribution to American society today is to give a
lecture on slave music, considering its African origins and American adaptations. Good sources for this
4. A great way to examine slave resistance is to give a lecture on the Amistad revolt of 1839. The incident
is the most celebrated uprising aboard a slave vessel. Use Howard Jones’s Mutiny on the Amistad: The
5. A lecture on free black society in the South will help explain the complexities of southern society in
antebellum America. Explain the relationship between white society and the free black community, as
6. Write a lecture on the intellectual defense of slavery that developed in the antebellum South. Use Paul
Finkelman’s Defending Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Old South (2003) for its extended essay and
IN-CLASS ACTIVITIES
1. Show your class a clip of Gone with the Wind that romanticizes the Old South. Then have them read a
selection of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Ask your class to discuss how each source
2. Access the online version of Mary Norcott Bryan’s A Grandmother’s Recollections of Dixie
(http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/bryan/bryan.html). Bryan, who was from North Carolina, wrote this
memoir in 1912 in the form of letters to her grandchildren. Distribute letters V, VI, and VII to the class.
3. Play a selection of slave music for your class. Such songs can be accessed at
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/experience/education/feature.html, where you will find religious,
work, and recreational songs. What were the slaves really saying in their songs and music? Ask your
4. Create a Venn diagram on the board to compare and contrast the three distinct subsections of the Old
South. Divide the class into three groups and assign each a subsection of the Old South to research.
(2002).
5. The textbook chapter looks at how the system of slavery was rooted in brutality, with countless
examples of punishment, violence, and rape. How did this culture of violence influence and shape
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What was more important in creating the distinctiveness of the Old South, its economics or its
culture?
2. Given that there were relatively few free persons of color and few urban slaves compared to the vast
majority of rural slaves, why is it important to understand their experiences?
3. What makes ideas about race so powerful that poor whites in the Old South seemingly ignored their
4. Why is it important to learn about slave rebellions in the Old South, since in the nineteenth century
there were only three major ones and none succeeded?
5. What was it about the institution of slavery and the way it was practiced that made African American
society a true “melting pot”?
6. In what ways were the differences and divisions between the antebellum South and northern society
expanding by 1860? Why?
PRACTICING CITIZENSHIP
One interesting aspect of the antebellum period is the degree to which Christians took divergent positions
on slavery, with abolitionists and southern apologists for slavery often being equally intense in their
religious devotion. Pick a currently controversial issue in American society, like abortion rights, Middle
East policy, the death penalty, or gay marriage, and pick one major religion or denomination to see
whether or to what extent that group might be internally divided on this topic. Once you have done some
