Most of the agriculture in the southern United
States during the early 19th century was dedicated to growing
one crop-cotton. Most of the cotton crop was grown on large plantations
that used black slave labor.
Plantations often became gathering points for people in Mississippi
towns. This was primarily because they were self-contained settlements.
The plantation owner could provide food, shelter, and clothing
for his family from the products of the plantation. Moreover,
plantations often included hunting and riding grounds for the
entertainment of the owner and visitors. Throughout the American
Civil War (1861-1865), blacks working as slaves on plantations
in the southern United States produced the food and supplies
that sustained the Confederate army.
~ Background ~
In the North the rhetoric of the American Revolution
(1775 - 1789) proved a powerful argument against slavery. Starting
with Vermont in 1777, one Northern state after another either
abolished slavery outright or passed
gradual emancipation laws that freed slave children as they reached
adulthood. Although abolition faced stiff opposition in areas
of New York, Rhode Island, and New Jersey, where slavery was
most economically significant, by the mid-1820s, virtually all
the slaves in the United States were in the Southern states.
These states were becoming more dependent on slave labor as cotton
became an important plantation crop.
In 1794 the invention of the cotton gin, a simple
device that revolutionized the processing of raw cotton, dramatically
increased the profitability of cotton cultivation. More slave
labor was dedicated to cotton production;
slave prices increased, and the value of cotton rose sharply.
In addition, slavery spread southward and westward into the vast
area acquired from France through the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.
By 1815 cotton was America's most valuable export, and the economic
and political power of cotton-growing states, often called the
"Cotton Kingdom," grew correspondingly.
~ Plantation Life ~
The need for slave labor, and thus the price of slaves,
was much higher in states in the lower South, such as Alabama,
Mississippi, and Louisiana, than in the states of the upper South,
including Virginia and Maryland. The result was a thriving domestic
slave trade that devastated many slave households. Teenage boys
and young adult men were especially desirable laborers for the
new areas, and slave families in the upper South lost sons, brothers,
and young fathers to the cotton plantations of the lower South.
At the time of the Revolution, most slaves were held along the
southeastern seaboard, but by 1860 the greatest concentrations
of slaves were in the lower South.
The lives of slaves were greatly influenced by where
they lived and worked. In Southern cities, slaves provided household
services, labored for small businessmen and merchants, and sometimes
worked as municipal garbage workers or firefighters. Both in
cities and on plantations, skilled slaves did the carpentry,
built and sometimes designed the buildings, crafted ornate furnishings,
prepared elaborate meals, supplied music for planters' formal
balls and parties, and provided services ranging from veterinary
care to folk medicine for both whites and blacks. Plantations
employed small numbers of slaves as household servants and some
as skilled workers. Most slaves, however, worked in the fields.
Plantation life, especially in the lower South, was hard and
dangerous, but because of the larger numbers of slaves, it offered
greater opportunities for establishing slave families and communities.
As the South expanded westward and as tobacco and
rice cultivation gave way to cotton, the way slaves worked changed.
In the 18th and 19th centuries slaves working on plantations
in the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia often labored
under the task system. Typically, a slave was given a task each
day and worked until that task was completed. Once the daily
task was finished, the rest of the day was the slave's own. The
work was extraordinarily hard, but the worker exercised some
control over the pace of work and the length of the workday.
Mississippi Cotton Plantation
On large 19th-century cotton plantations, slaves usually
worked in groups called gangs headed by slave drivers. The driver,
who was generally a slave selected for intelligence and leadership
ability, directly supervised the field laborers. Gangs worked
the crop rows, plowing, planting, cultivating, or picking, depending
on the season. Unlike those under the task system, these slaves
had little control over their work schedule beyond the rhythm
of the work songs that regulated the pace of their work.
The vast majority of white Southerners could afford
no slaves and struggled for basic self-sufficiency, but many
slaveholding planters were rich and politically powerful. By
the 1850s there were more millionaires in the plantations from
Natchez, Mississippi, to New Orleans, Louisiana, than in all
other areas of the nation combined.
By 1860 the 12 richest counties in the nation were all located
in the South. The Southern economy depended on slavery, and by
1860 the U.S. economy depended on the Southern cotton that accounted
for almost 60 percent of the value of all the nation's exports.
Cotton weighing during harvest
time
Slave labor on farms and in factories freed more whites
to fight in the Civil War. The slaves, however, demonstrated
their desire for freedom by escaping from Confederate plantations
by the tens of thousands. In the beginning of the war, some Northern
commanders returned slaves to their masters, and others forced
escapees to work for the U.S. Army. Then, on January 1, 1863,
Lincoln turned U.S. war aims toward slavery's destruction by
issuing his Emancipation Proclamation
freeing slaves held by those Southerners still in rebellion. |
