The cotton gin is pretty universally credited (or blamed) by historians for entrenching the institution of slavery in the first place.
re the South & thinking about the Civil War:
I immediately noticed this on my first trip South. Outside of school I’d never given this a second thought, until I visited Atlanta. I was full up with the Civil War after a week. And utterly amazed at how much time and energy the South seemed to spend on it.
It started at the Amtrak station, which had a statue to some Confederate hero or other. (Then there’s the designs on both the Georgia and Florida flags, sure signs that they’ve gotten over it. Right?) It didn’t stop until I was back North.
On my second trip, we visited Stone Mountain. Nothing remotely like this exists in the North. The only memorial to the Civil War I’ve seen that is identifiably such is in Easton, Pennsylvania, home of Crayola crayons. It’s right in the middle of their downtown. Other than that, nothing. (unless you include a circle of cannon with their mouths buried in the ground, at West Point, the point of this being to symbolize the hope that Americans will never again turn guns against each other.)
Well, in fairness you’d probably see a lot of reminders of the Civil War in, say, Gettysburg, Pa. Atlanta was a major Civil War battlefield, and we have scads of those roadside historical markers talking about how the such-and-such regiment of so-and-so’s division advanced up Beaver Ruin Road as part of the advance on Snellville, and so on. Obviously, you’re not gonna get those in Des Moines. (“On this spot, November 15, 1864, nothing of any particular importance took place, but 960 miles away a bunch of guys torched Atlanta, Ga.”)
On cotton technology: I wrote a law-school paper on the subject of cotton-country sharecropping systems. (My grandfather, born in the Texas panhandle in 1915, lived his childhood under a form of sharecropping.)
My research (conducted mainly from secondary sources, mostly New Deal-era government research papers in the archives of the Schomburg Center, Harlem) concluded that three primary factors resulted in the end of sharecropping (a legalized extension of slavery) by WWII: first, the development of practical cotton-picking machines, second, the Great Migration of southern blacks (and some whites) to northern cities for industrial labor, and third, WWII itself, which both re-accelerated the Great Migration and resulted in the drafting of some southern blacks, thus providing even greater incentives for landowners to mechanize.
Initially developed in the 20s, the cotton-picking machine wasn’t completely perfected until after the War, but already by the late 1930s it was starting to take a bite out of farm labor demand. By the fifties its adoption was complete, and sharecropping by and large ceased to exist.
A couple of other notes: Collounsbury is certainly correct on racism. Unfortunately, I no longer have the documentation available, but a law-school course I took in American legal history covered the extensive legal restrictions on blacks’ economic status in the antebellum South. Responding to slave rebellions, in the 1850s the most heavily slave-dependent states (Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi) adopted a series of laws that in essence rendered it impossible for any black person to live other than as a slave. At least one state (I think it was MS, I’m not sure now) passed a statute forbidding any black person from handling money other than in the presence of an owner or employer. Most states also passed laws forbidding manumission (the freeing of slaves upon the owner’s death, as George Washington did but Thomas Jefferson did not), since the very existence of freedmen was considered such a potential threat. (IIRC, Virginia adopted such a law not long after Jefferson’s death.) Other statutes forbade slaves from attempting to purchase their freedom (assuming they’d somehow managed to touch money long enough to accumulate it).
These statutes carry a panicky air about them. South Carolina’s were particularly harsh, as slaves were, I believe, the majority of the population during this period. Accordingly, I don’t think there’s much basis for asserting that Radical Reconstruction did anything more than reaffirm well-rooted pathologies.
For contrast, we looked at other slavery systems, in Jamaica and Brazil. Under both systems, slaves were able to maintain a certain degree of economic autonomy – in Jamaica, by engaging in small-scall cash farming. (I’m hazier on Brazil, but I think slaves were permitted to own assets and may have been able to do “side work” for cash.) In Brazil, slaves could ultimately purchase their freedom, and many did (at least those who survived; it is alleged that a greater percentage of Brazillian slaves died of overwork).
Our professor, have looked into the matter for some years, was not aware of any colonial slaving system that so systematically destroyed its victims’ economic independence as the American.
Per my limited reading, the above observations were also my understanding.
It occurred to me at the time and since that this history could go a long way to explaining historical roots of current problems in the community.
xtnjohnson-
Good points, all, but I think you’re over-generalizing a bit about the opressive statutes in the South. I am unaware of any statute which prohibited slaves from purchasing their freedom. If there were such statutes, I think they would have been the exception rather than the rule. I know of instances where slaves did purchase their own freedom right up until the eve of war.
I’m reminded of the story of the slave who had purchased his freedom before the war. Upon encountering the Union army, he remarked, “If I’d known you gunmen were coming, I’d’ve saved my money!”
On the other hand, slave revolts, both real and rumored, did lead to statutes designed to restrict the movement and communication of slaves. Nat Turner’s revolt in the 1830’s led to the statutes prohibiting slaves from learning to read. (Making it harder in theory to organize a revolt.) Other statutes and ordinances imposed curfews.
I think you’re stretching it a bit to say that the various statutes made it impossible for a black man to live except as a slave. There were, after all, numerous free blacks around. Granted, the statutes made that status inconvenient and uncomfortable.
Spoke-
Do you know what percentage of blacks in the South of the pre-Civil War era were free? The population is often described as I did above: “Nine million people in the CSA nearly 4 million of them were slaves.” But I can’t recall a figure for free blacks.
Jois
From the earlier thread on this topic:
Also, Jeremy’s Evil Twin: the Marshall Plan was a U.S. program to provide loans & grants to European communities to rebuild after WW 2 . It did not involve disarmament, or WW1, in any fashion. Helped discourage the spread of communism, too. Many beautiful landmarks were restored by this program. Hospitals were built, as were schools, libraries, & other civic institutions. In many ways, it undid Hitler & his foul works–it did not create him.
From the United States Historical Census Data Browser at the University of Virginia:
Number of slaves/number of free colored persons (1860 Census):
The 11 Confederate States:
Alabama - 435,080/2,690
Arkansas - 111,115/144
Florida - 61,745/932
Georgia - 462,198/3,500
Lousiania - 331,726/18,647
Mississippi - 436,631/773
North Carolina - 331,059/30,463
South Carolina - 402,406/9,914
Tennessee - 275,719/7,300
Texas - 182,566/355
Virginia - 490,865/58,042
In Missouri (114,931 slaves and 3,572 free blacks) and Kentucky (225,483 slaves and 10,684 free blacks), the official governments did not secede, but secessionist conventions voted to do so and representatives from those states were seated in the Confederate Congress (accounting for the 13 stars on the Confederate Battle Flag). To round out the slave states as of 1860, in Maryland (where there was some talk of secession) the number of slaves (87,189) only slightly exceeded the number of free blacks (83,942); in Delaware (which never really contemplated secession), there were 19,829 free blacks and only 1,798 slaves. There were 2 slaves in Kansas, 15 in Nebraska, and 18 in New Jersey. (When the northern states abolished slavery, many did so gradually, so that children of slaves born after a certain date would be free, but existing slaves would not be emancipated; hence the 18 remaining slaves in New Jersey.)
Within the Confederacy itself, there were 3,521,110 slaves and 132,760 free blacks; 3.63% of blacks in what become the CSA were free. Within the 15 slave states there were 3,950,511 slaves and 250,787 free blacks; freemen thus made up 5.97% of the total black population of the slave states.
Thank you, MEBuckner, it’s stunning to see the real numbers.
Jois
While most of the southern menfolk were off fighting the war. Why didn’t the slaves revolt? They actually helped the south’s economy roll on. At least for as long as it did. Why would they do that?
Well, but a lot of slaves did, if not revolt, run away, at least, and in some cases, the runaways joined the Union army. I know in one state (I think Georgia), the governor held back state millitia, because he was afraid of a slave uprising. But, Reeder, think about it. Lets say it’s 1862, and you’re a slave in S. Carolina. What are you going to do? You could try to escape to Pennsylvania, but that’s a long walk, and you have to go through a lot of territory where, if you’re found, you’ll either be recaptured or shot on sight, then you have to cross a war zone, where 2 armies are going at each other, and risk getting shot by either of them. You could revolt, of course, but you don’t know how to load and fire a gun, and, even if you did, getting one would be hard,. You’d then have to get in touch with other slaves interested in revolt, and they’d have the same problems you did, and your mobility and communication is restricted. Besides, lets say you’re successful, and you manage to kill all the whites on the farms around you. Then what? You can’t just settle down…I mean, people will come after you, and kill you in all sorts of horrible ways if you’re captured, and the Union army is a long way off. And, lets say you hold out until the Union army gets there (Maybe you’re near the front lines and not in SC). It’s 1862. Do you think they’re going to be thrilled about a bunch of black former slaves with guns who just massacred a bunch of (white) civilians. You’ll be lucky if they don’t hang you. So, what do you do? You do what most slaves did…you stay where you are, you try not to draw attention to yourself, and you pray.
Just a passage from C.S. Vice President Alexander H. Stephens’ “Cornerstone Speech” of March 21, 1861 (also linked to earlier in the thread) which struck me as giving a new perspective on hypothetical C.S.-U.S. relations (this was before Fort Sumter, and before the secession of Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennesee, and Virginia):