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In the history of the
Southern United States The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...
, the Antebellum Period (from la, ante bellum, lit= before the war) spanned the end of the
War of 1812 The War of 1812 (18 June 1812 – 17 February 1815) was fought by the United States of America and its indigenous allies against the United Kingdom and its allies in British North America, with limited participation by Spain in Florida. It be ...
to the start of the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and t ...
in 1861. The Antebellum South was characterized by the use of slavery and the culture it fostered. As the era proceeded, Southern intellectuals and leaders gradually shifted from portraying slavery as an embarrassing and temporary system, to a full-on defense of
slavery as a positive good Slavery as a positive good was the prevailing view of Southern U.S. politicians and intellectuals just before the American Civil War, as opposed to seeing it as a crime against humanity or even a necessary evil. They defended the legal ensla ...
, and harshly criticized the budding
abolitionist movement Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The British ...
. The economy was largely plantation based, and dependent on exports. Society was stratified, inegalitarian, and perceived by immigrants as lacking in opportunities. Consequently the manufacturing base lagged behind the non-slave states. Wealth inequality grew as the larger landholders took the greater share of the profits generated by slaves, which also helped to entrench their power as a political class. As the country expanded westward, slavery's propagation became a major issue in national politics, eventually boiling over into the
Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government polici ...
. In the years that followed, this period was romanticized by historical revisionists to protect three central assertions: that the Confederate cause was heroic, that enslaved people were happy and satisfied, and that slavery was not the primary cause of the war. This phenomenon has continued to influence
racism Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. It may also mean prejudice, discrimination, or antagoni ...
,
gender roles A gender role, also known as a sex role, is a social role encompassing a range of behaviors and attitudes that are generally considered acceptable, appropriate, or desirable for a person based on that person's sex. Gender roles are usually cen ...
and religious attitudes in the South, and to a lesser extent the rest of the country, to the present day.


History

In the 18th century, the Atlantic slave trade brought enslaved Africans to the South during the colonial period as a source of labor for the harvesting of crops. There were almost 700,000 enslaved persons in the U.S. in 1790, which equated to approximately 18 percent of the total population, or roughly one in every six people. This would persist through the 17th and 18th centuries, but it was not until the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in the 1790s, that slavery grew very profitable and that the large plantation system developed. In the 15 years between the invention of the cotton gin and the passage of the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, an increase in the slave trade occurred, furthering the slave system in the United States.


Economic structure

The Antebellum South saw large expansions in agriculture, while manufacturing growth remained relatively slow. The Southern economy was characterized by a low level of capital accumulation (largely slave-labor-based) and a shortage of liquid capital, which, when aggravated by the need to concentrate on a few staples, the pervasive anti-industrial and anti-urban ideology, and the reduction of Southern banking, led to a South dependent on export trade. In contrast to the economies of the North and Western U.S., which relied primarily on their own domestic markets. Since the Southern domestic market consisted primarily of plantations, Southern states imported sustenance commodities from the West, and manufactured goods from the North. The
plantation system A plantation economy is an economy based on agricultural mass production, usually of a few commodity crops, grown on large farms worked by laborers or slaves. The properties are called plantations. Plantation economies rely on the export of cash ...
can be seen as the factory system applied to agriculture, with a concentration of labor under skilled management. But while the industrial manufacturing-based labor economy of the North was driven by growing demand, maintenance of the plantation economic system depended upon usage of slave labor that was both abundant and cheap. The five major commodities of the Southern agricultural economy were cotton, grain, tobacco, sugar, and rice, with the production of the leading
cash crop A cash crop or profit crop is an agricultural crop which is grown to sell for profit. It is typically purchased by parties separate from a farm. The term is used to differentiate marketed crops from staple crop (or "subsistence crop") in subsist ...
, cotton, which were concentrated in the
Deep South The Deep South or the Lower South is a cultural and geographic subregion in the Southern United States. The term was first used to describe the states most dependent on plantations and slavery prior to the American Civil War. Following the wa ...
(Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana).


Inefficiency of slave-based agriculture

The leading historian of the era was Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, who studied slavery not so much as a political issue between North and South, but as a social and economic system. He focused on the large plantations that dominated the South. Phillips addressed the unprofitability of slave labor and slavery's ill effects on the Southern economy. An example of pioneering comparative work was "A Jamaica Slave Plantation" (1914). His methods inspired the "Phillips school" of slavery studies, between 1900 and 1950. Phillips argued that large-scale plantation slavery was inefficient and not progressive. It had reached its geographical limits by 1860 or so, and therefore eventually had to fade away (as happened in
Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
). In 1910, he argued in "The Decadence of the Plantation System" that slavery was an unprofitable relic that persisted because it produced social status, honor, and
political power In social science and politics, power is the social production of an effect that determines the capacities, actions, beliefs, or conduct of actors. Power does not exclusively refer to the threat or use of force ( coercion) by one actor again ...
. "Most farmers in the South had small-to-medium-sized farms with few slaves, but the large plantation owner's wealth, often reflected in the number of slaves they owned, afforded them considerable prestige and political power." Phillips contended that masters treated enslaved persons relatively well; his views on that issue were later sharply rejected by Kenneth M. Stampp. His conclusions about the economic decline of slavery were challenged in 1958 by Alfred H. Conrad and John R. Meyer in a landmark study published in the '' Journal of Political Economy''. Their arguments were further developed by Robert Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, who argued in their 1974 book, ''
Time on the Cross ''Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery'' (1974) is a book by the economists Robert Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman. Fogel and Engerman argued that slavery was an economically rational institution and that the economic exploitat ...
,'' that slavery was both efficient and profitable, as long as the price of cotton was high enough. In turn, Fogel and Engerman came under attack from other historians of slavery.


Effects of economy on social structure

As slavery began to displace indentured servitude as the principal supply of labor in the plantation systems of the South, the economic nature of the institution of slavery aided in the increased inequality of wealth seen in the antebellum South. The demand for slave labor and the U.S. ban on importing more slaves from Africa drove up prices for slaves, making it profitable for smaller farmers in older settled areas such as Virginia to sell their slaves further south and west. The actuarial risk, or the potential loss in investment of owning slaves from death, disability, etc. was much greater for small plantation owners. Accentuated by the rise in price of slaves seen just prior to the
Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government polici ...
, the overall costs associated with owning slaves to the individual plantation owner led to the concentration of slave ownership seen at the eve of the Civil War.


Social structure

Much of the Antebellum South was rural, and in line with the plantation system, largely agricultural. With the exception of
New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans
and
Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was ...
, the slave states had no large cities, and the urban population of the South could not compare to that of the
Northeast The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sep ...
, or even that of the agrarian West. This led to a sharp division in class in the southern states, between the landowning "master" class, yeoman farmers, poor whites, and slaves; while in the northern and western states, much of the social spectrum was dominated by a wide range of different laboring classes.


Wealth inequality

The conclusion that, while both the North and the South were characterized by a high degree of inequality during the plantation era, the wealth distribution was much more unequal in the South than in the North arises from studies concerned with the equality of land, slave, and wealth distribution. For example, in certain states and counties, due to the concentration of landholding and slave holding, which were highly correlated, six percent of landowners ended up commanding one-third of the gross income and an even higher portion of the net income. The majority of landowners, who had smaller scale plantations, saw a disproportionately small portion in revenues generated by the slavery-driven plantation system.


Effects of social structure on economy

While the two largest classes in the South included land- and slave-owners and slaves, various strata of social classes existed within and between the two. In examining class relations and the banking system in the South, the economic exploitation of slave labor can be seen to arise from a need to maintain certain conditions for the existence of slavery and from a need for each of the remaining social strata to remain in status quo. In order to meet conditions where slavery may continue to exist, members of the master class (e.g. white, landowning, slave-owning) had to compete with other members of the master class to maximize the surplus labor extracted from slaves. Likewise, in order to remain within the same class, members of the master class (and each subsumed class below) must expand their claim on revenues derived from the slave labor surplus.


Mercantilist underpinnings

Mercantilist Mercantilism is an economic policy that is designed to maximize the exports and minimize the imports for an economy. It promotes imperialism, colonialism, tariffs and subsidies on traded goods to achieve that goal. The policy aims to reduc ...
ideologies largely explain the rise of the plantation system in the United States. In the 16th and 17th centuries under mercantilism, rulers of nations believed that the accumulation of wealth through a favorable
balance of trade The balance of trade, commercial balance, or net exports (sometimes symbolized as NX), is the difference between the monetary value of a nation's exports and imports over a certain time period. Sometimes a distinction is made between a balance ...
was the best way to ensure power. As a result, Several European nations began to colonize territories across the Atlantic to take advantage of their favorable eco and encourage exports. One example of England utilizing the American colonies for economic gain was
tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...
. When tobacco was first discovered as a recreational substance, there was a widespread social backlash in England, spearheaded by King James himself. By the middle of the 17th century, however,
Parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government via hearings and inquiries. Th ...
had realized the revenue potential of tobacco and quickly changed its official moral stance towards its use. As a result, tobacco plantations sprung up across the American South in large numbers to support European demand. By 1670, more than half of all tobacco shipped to England was being re-exported to other countries throughout Europe at a premium. In similar ways Britain was able to profit from other American staple crops, such as cotton, rice, and indigo. As Russell Menard puts it, Britain's capitalizing on increased European demand for these crops "fueled the expansion of the American plantation colonies, transformed the Atlantic into an English inland sea, and led to the creation of the first
British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts e ...
." Many claim that being a part of the British mercantilist system was in the best economic interest of the American colonies as well, as they would not have been able to survive as independent economic entities. Robert Haywood, in his article "Mercantilism and South Carolina Agriculture, 1700–1763", argues that "it was unthinkable that any trade could prosper in the straight-jacket of regimented and restricted international trade, without the guiding hand of a powerful protecting government."


Adverse economic effects

The plantation era, while a part of the South's initial economic prosperity, was also the reason why the South lagged in productivity starting in the early-to-mid-19th century. Since the plantation system mainly required a large volume of unskilled labor, the South did not have the human capital to succeed when the plantation era was over. Ulrich Bonnell Phillips contends that the plantation "sadly restricted the opportunity of such men as were of better industrial quality than was required for the field gangs." Essentially, men who would have been otherwise capable of performing other skilled jobs were nonetheless relegated to field work because of the nature of the system. A 1984 journal article by Claudia Goldin and Kenneth Sokoloff suggested that the South misallocated labor compared to the North, which more eagerly embraced women and child labor in its factories to push forward industrialization due to their relative value to Northern agriculture being lesser than in Southern agriculture. While the South still attracted immigrants from Europe, the North attracted far more during the early-to-mid 1800s, such that by the time of the American Civil War, the population of the North far exceeded the non-enslaved population of the South per the 1860 United States census. Colin Woodard argued in his 2011 book ''
American Nations ''American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America'' is an American non-fiction book written by Colin Woodard and published in 2011. Woodard proposes a framework for examining American history and current events ...
'' that the South was relatively less successful in attracting immigrants due to the South's reputation as a more stratified society. Striving immigrants who sought economic advancement thus tended to favor the more egalitarian North, compared to the more aristocratic South, where there were fewer perceived opportunities for advancement.


See also

*
Reconstruction era The Reconstruction era was a period in American history following the American Civil War (1861–1865) and lasting until approximately the Compromise of 1877. During Reconstruction, attempts were made to rebuild the country after the bloo ...
*
Confederate States of America The Confederate States of America (CSA), commonly referred to as the Confederate States or the Confederacy was an unrecognized breakaway republic in the Southern United States that existed from February 8, 1861, to May 9, 1865. The Confeder ...
*
Deep South The Deep South or the Lower South is a cultural and geographic subregion in the Southern United States. The term was first used to describe the states most dependent on plantations and slavery prior to the American Civil War. Following the wa ...
* New South, the post-Reconstruction Era economy and society in the Southern U.S. * Old South, the pre-Civil War economy and society in the Southern U.S.


References

{{US history Economic history of the American Civil War Eras of United States history American frontier Jeffersonian democracy Historical regions in the United States 19th century in the United States Plantations in the United States History of the Southern United States