Slavery worked in a very positive way for the plantation owners. Southern society was changing itself according to the needs of slavery because the southern economy was the foundation. This being said the numbers of slaves were rapidly increasing because of the rise of King Cotton in the lower south.
The cotton area of the lower south were using slaves and depending on them much more than the upper south was with the tobacco kingdom. To keep up with the lower south, the upper south starting focusing more slave trade to help build their framings. It is important to recognize the diversity between plantation society and a farming slave-trading region.
The slave prices were increasing and due to high demands in the lower south, the upper south was failing with the tobacco kingdom. Since the upper south was failing, slave trade took off. The slave trade did help the upper south but there were many flaws.
The slave rate was on its last legs of importance in the upper south meaning it had a weaker grip on civic loyalty than in the cotton states. This made the upper south divided on what their future held. The southern colonies included:.
Cash market crops require large amounts of land and a large work force. It was easy to get land-there was so much land in the Americas that at first it seemed almost free for the taking-but labor was scarce.
Elizabeth Springs indentured herself in exchange for a passage to the Americas. She served in a Maryland household and wrote home to her father, complaining of the terrible treatment, begging her family to send her a blanket. Indentured servants performed much of the labor during the early years of colonization and were mainly of English, Irish, or German heritage.
These servants got their name from the indenture or contract they signed, binding themselves to work for a number of years usually four to seven to pay for their transportation to the New World. Voluntary indentured servitude accounted for half of the white settlers living in the colonies outside New England. After serving their years of indenture, the servant was free to go and acquire land on their own.
Religion did not have the same impact on communities as in the New England colonies or the Mid-Atlantic colonies because people lived on plantations that were often distant and spread out from one another.
The Southern economy was almost entirely based on farming. Rice, indigo, tobacco, sugarcane, and cotton were cash crops. Crops were grown on large plantations where slaves and indentured servants worked the land. This activity can be copied directly into your Google Classroom, where you can use it for practice, as an assessment, or, to collect data. The more cotton processed, the more that could be exported to the mills of Great Britain and New England.
And the invention of the cotton gin coincided with other developments that opened up large-scale global trade: Cargo ships were built bigger, better and easier to navigate. Powerful navies protected them against piracy. And newly invented steam engines powered these ships, as well as looms and weaving machines, which increased the capacity to produce cotton cloth.
With all these factors amping up production and distribution, the South was poised to expand its cotton-based economy. With more land needed for cultivation, the number of plantations expanded in the South and moved west into new territory. Production exploded: Between and alone, the U. The upshot: As cotton became the backbone of the Southern economy, slavery drove impressive profits. The benefits of cotton produced by enslaved workers extended to industries beyond the South.
In the North and Great Britain, cotton mills hummed, while the financial and shipping industries also saw gains. Banks in New York and London provided capital to new and expanding plantations for purchasing both land and enslaved workers.
As a result, enslaved people became a legal form of property that could be used as collateral in business transactions or to pay off outstanding debt. A sort of sales tax was also levied on enslaved worker transactions. Steadily, a near-feudal society emerged in the South. At the top was the aristocratic landowning elite, who wielded much of the economic and political power. Their plantations spanned upward of a thousand acres, controlling hundreds—and, in some cases, thousands—of enslaved people.
A culture of gentility and high-minded codes of honor emerged. Below the elite class were the small planters who owned a handful of enslaved people.
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