CHAPTER 3, SECTION 2

The Agricultural South

“We stroll’d down the Pasture quite to the River, admiring the Pleasantness of the evening, & the delightsome Prospect of the River Hills, Huts on the Summits, low Bottoms, Trees of various Kinds, and Sizes, Cattle & Sheep feeding some near us, & others at a great distance on the green sides of the Hills…I love to walk on these high Hills…where I can have a long View of many Miles & see on the Summits of the Hills Clusters of Savin Trees, through these often a little Farm-House, or Quarter for Negroes.” How might this help us understand a certain perspective

of the south?

Chesapeake area to Georgia = very fertile soil

Farmers specialized in single cash crop – agriculture raised primarily for sale

Widespread framing meant that plantation society developed instead of towns

Long rivers allowed farmers to ship/move goods easily

South becomes rural and self-sufficient

New folk arrive

-By 1700s many immigrants arrived

-thousands of Germans settled in Maryland and Virginia

-Scots-Irish settled in North Carolina

Watch the dollar grow, son…

Planters controlled most of economy and politics

Luxury filled livesTobacco farmers profited exponentially,

especially in Chesapeake area

WOMEN

-2nd class citizens

-no vote

-no preaching

-educated in domestic tasks

What affects might this have on the future? How do you think it got this way?

“My wife and I had another scold about mending my shoes, but it was soon over by her submission.”

-William Byrd

The White indentured servant

Many poor people – of all races½ to 2/3 of white immigrants were

indentured servants

Slavery – another market of exploitation“The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died…”

-Olaudah Equiano , who was 11 when he was forced to make the passage. He later bought his freedom.

The boom and abuse of Slavery in the South

Slaves seen as propertyFirst big boom to West Indies – Jamaica,

Barbados – tens of thousands of African slaves

Triangular trade – what to where for what?In South:

80 – 90 percent worked in fields 10 – 20 percent were domestic slaves

Culture and Coping

Slaves kept rituals: drums, dance, gourd fiddle

Resistance and revolt Stono Rebellion In Charleston – 20 slaves killed several planter

families, beat drums down the street to call for other slaves to flee with them to Spanish Florida

Rebellion ultimately failed, but scared Southern colonists

What heritage remains from this time? Video exploration – Gullah people