Sunday, November 25, 2007

Chapter 11: White Society In the South

In 1850, 350,000 whites in the South out of 6 million owned slaves.

In 1860, it was 380,000 out of 8 million.

Misleading since family's were large, still only one quarter of families owned slaves

Only a small number of those owned lots of slaves.

The Planter Class

The large plantation owners were very powerful.

Determined social and political life for their region.

Some were rich enough to have many homes and would spend months living in the cities.

Others traveled to Europe.

Hosted opulent parties and lived very social lives

Many southerners like to compare these planters to aristocracy.

However, most planters were new to wealth and power.

As late as 1850, most great landowners were first generation settlers

Large parts of the "Old South" had been cultivated for less than two decades at the time of the Civil War

Planter's lives were not as leisurely as myth suggests

Planters supervised operations carefully

Planting was a very competitive industry

Many of the planter class lived modestly

Invested so heavily in land that little money was left for personal comfort

Many Planters moved frequently to new land

Perhaps newness of the planter way of life is what made planters struggle to seems aristocratic

Non-planter whites avoided "coarse" jobs, like trade and commerce

Gravitated to military.

Military suited "chevalier" image

"Honor"

 White males abided by an elaborate cod of chivalry

They were obligated to defend their "honor"

Dueling survived much longer in the North than in the South

Anything that challenged a man's honor or manhood would be occasion for a duel (or occasionaly a public rebuke)

Senator Charles Sumner made a speech which insulted Senator Preston Brooks

Brooks marched into Sumner's office and beat him with a cane

Brooks  acted to defend Southern honor

North saw him as a savage

Defending the honor of women was the most important obligation of a southern gentlemen.

The "Southern Lady"

Upper-class women in the South centered their lives around matters of the home

Served as wives and hostesses

Similar to the lives of middle-class women in the North

Few genteel Southern women worked

Southern women did live different lives than Northern women

Society founded around men defending women's honor

In practice, this made women much less powerful

George Fitzhugh wrote: "Women, like children, have but one right, and that is the right to protection. The right to protection involves the obligation to obey."

Most women lived on farms, relatively isolated, and thus had few opportunities to advance beyond the role of wife and mother. 

Southern families were extremely patriarchal.

Women did have say in economic life of their farm

Wove and spun and generally helped with production.

However, on some of the larger plantations, even these roles were considered unsuitable and they served as the "plantation mistress".

Plantation mistresses were mostly ornaments for their husbands

There was less education for Southern women

Before the Civil War, a quarter of all Southern women were illiterate.

In the South, the birth rate was 20 percent higher, and the infant mortality rate was also high

Almost half of the children born in the South in 1860 died before they reached the age of five.

Slave labor kept women from needing to do many hard tasks, but it also threatened their relationships with their husbands.

Many white men would have affairs with female slaves

Their children became slaves.

Several women rebelled against the South's roles for women

Some became abolitionists and moved to the North

The Plain Folk

Typical white southerners were not planters, but modest farmers

Known as plain folk

Some owned a few slaves, but they lived and worked much more closely with their slaves than plantation owners.

Some plain folk were subsistence farmers, while others unsuccessfully grew cotton.

It was rare for poor farmers to get rich.

Southern education system made advancement difficult

Universities only for the upper class

Elementary and secondary schools were fewer and worse than those in the North.

Only a small number of plain folk opposed the planter class.

Mostly only the "hill people", who lived in the Ozark and Appalachian mountains.

These were the most isolated Southerners.

Completely secluded.

They disliked slavery because it threatened their independence.

The hill people were the only Southerners to resist the trend of secession in the Civil War and some even fought on the side of the confederacy.

Many plain folk depended on planter class

Access to cotton gins, loans, etc.

Many plain folk were related to members of the planter class.

These mutual ties prevented class tensions

South was a more democratic society than the North

Many people voted and attended campaign meetings

Most officeholders were upperclass

Plain folk families were even more paternalistic than planter families

Every family member needed to do there job for a family succeed

Many were convinced that destroying slavery would also destroy patriarchy

Even southerners who didn't share in the plantation economy valued Southern virtues

"Crackers", extremely low class whites, otherwise known as "poor white trash"

Lived in swamps and red hills in small cabins

Owned no land and lived off foraging or hunting

Some worked as laborers, but slave system made this work hard to find

There plight was even worse than that of the slaves

Crackers had no objection to slavery or the plantation system however.

Racism united the South

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