Chapter 12
Divided North,
Divided South
Sectionalism
• North:
business
and trade
• South:
plantation
agriculture
• West:
frontier
The North
• Rapidly growing population
• Urbanization
• Industry and trade expanding
In 1820, most cities were clustered
along the Atlantic seaboard.
By 1860, new transportation outlets—canals and railroads—had
fostered the rapid growth of cities in the interior, especially at
trading locations with access to navigable rivers or to the Great
Lakes. Much of this growth occurred in the 1850s.
Wall Street, New York City, 1850s
Social effects of Industrial Revolution
• Specialization
• The clock
• Materialism
The
Antebellum
South
• Cash crops
• Plantations
• Slavery
• “Yoeman”
farmers a
majority
(nonslaveholders)
A yeoman farmstead in New Braumfels, Texas. The
yeomanry strove for self-sufficiency by growing food
crops and grazing livestock.
The Economics of Slavery
• Cotton gin
• Textile
industry
• Railroads
• “King
Cotton”
• Westward
expansion
• Political
realignment
Seven slave states entered the Union after 1800
as cotton production shifted westward.
The
expansion
of slavery,
1820-1860
Most of
the
Upper
South
was
outside
the
cotton
belt
where the
demand
for slave
labor was
greatest.
Slavery and Westward Expansion
Plantations
• Mostly self-sufficient
• Very profitable
– High cotton prices
– Cotton 60% US
exports-1840
– Fastest route to
wealth in antebellum
U.S.
• Cultured society
• Owners are elites in
community
– Cavaliers
– Civil War officers
A slave auction in Virginia, 1861.
African
American field
hands return
from a South
Carolina
cotton field in
the 1860s. The
economy of
the prewar
South was
based on the
production of
cotton by a
large enslaved
labor force.
Preparing
cotton for
the gin on
J.J. Smith
plantation
Slave
life I
• Chattel
-No
legal
rights
• Educating slaves
illegal after 1831
revolt
• Exploitation
–Labor
–Sexual
Slave life II
• Psychological abuse
– Deference required
– Language of slavery
• Reinforces roles, racism
• Constant threat of violence
– Overseer
– Fear of revolt (Haiti)
– All violence against slaves is legal
• Families split
– profit and punishment
– Sold “down the river”
• Manumission rare
Cotton
Fields of
Mississippi
Young slave
children stand
with a full
basket of
cotton bolls
near bursting
cotton plants
in a
Mississippi
field.
Five
Generations
of an AfricanAmerican
Family
together in a
dirt yard
outside a
wooden shack
on the South
Carolina
plantation of
J.J. Smith.
Especially on
large
plantations,
slave
nursemaids
cared for the
young
children in
the white
planter’s
family.
Resistance
• Sabotage
• Ignorance
• Runaways
–Underground
RR/Tubman
–Fugitives
–Slave
catchers
• Rebellions
Nat
Turner’s
revolt 1831
The Defense of Slavery
• Reacting to
abolitionists
• Increasingly
belligerent,
uncompromising
• Arguments:
– Biblical
– Racial inferiority
• Paternalism
– Better off than
Northern factory
workers
• Dissent squashed
• Politics: Gag rule
Science & religion were
used as a defense for
slavery and racism
Cursed be Canaan. A slave of
slaves shall he be to his
brothers.
-Genesis 9:25
Slaves, obey in all things your
masters.
-Colossians 3:22
Proslavery Propaganda