Brinkley, Chapter 11 “Cotton, Slavery, and the Old South”
Main themes of Chapter Eleven:

The effect of short-staple cotton's rise on the economic development of the South, and the impact this enthroning
of "King Cotton" had on subsequent Southern social and political development

The class and gender dynamics of Southern white society, in both myth and reality

The character of the different varieties of the South's "peculiar institution," and African-Americans' various forms
of resistance to it

The separate culture of African-American slavery, and how it manifested itself in religion, music, language, and
family life
A thorough study of Chapter Eleven should enable the student to understand the following:
1. The expansion of short-staple cotton throughout the South, and the role it played in shaping the "Southern way of
life"
2. The workings of trade and industry under the Southern agricultural system
3. The structure and founding myths of Southern plantation society, and the role enslaved people played in that
society
4. The cultural and political practices and beliefs of the non-elite, non-slaveholding white population
5. The forms of active and passive resistance African-Americans engaged in to combat slavery in the South
6. The culture of African-American slavery, as expressed through religion, music, language, and family life
7. The continuing historical debate over the South, its "peculiar institution," and the effects of enslavement on the
blacks
Key Persons / Events / Terms / Concepts













Decline of tobacco economy consonant with
growth of the cotton economy (upper v. lower
South)
Short-staple cotton
“Cotton is king!”
Internal slave trade from upper South to lower
South
Tredegar Iron Works (Richmond)
Brokers (“factors”) for planters’ crops and their
role in contributing to the southern financial system
James D.B. De Bow and the De Bow Review
“colonial dependency” of the South
The Cavalier image
Percentage of slave-holding in the antebellum
South
Planter aristocracy and their values
“Southern honor” (the cult of honor)
The “Southern lady” (positives and negatives of
this societal role)














Burdens of being a plantation mistress
“Plain folk” (or yeoman farmers) and their relation
to slavery
“Hill people” (or backcountry farmers) and their
relation to slavery
“poor white trash”
Reasons for limited class conflict in the socially
stratified South
The “peculiar institution”
Slave codes
Conditions of slavery and the size and type of
plantation
Task and gang systems
Material conditions of life as a slave
Special position of slave women
House slaves
Sexual abuse of slaves
The similarities and difference of urban slavery
(slavery in the cities)






Free blacks in the South: benefits and dangers
Slave markets
The domestic slave trade vis-à-vis the foreign slave
trade
Types of slave resistance
Famous slave revolts (rebellions)
“pidgin English”







Slave spirituals
African-American religion
Slave prayer meetings
The slave family
Slave marriages
Importance of kinship networks
The paternalist dialectic between slave and master