Slavery in the Lower South (AL, FL, GA, LA, MS, SC, TX)

Slavery existed in the Lower South from the time of the first European settlements. The Lower South was settled later than most of the Western Hemisphere. Thus, slavery as an institution was already well established in the British colonies on the east coast, but also throughout the French and Spanish Caribbean and Mexico. The soil and climate of the South allowed for the planting of labor-intensive crops like sugar, rice, and cotton that made slavery an efficient and profitable labor system.

Slavery was present at the inception of the colony of South Carolina, first settled in 1670. In 1739, twenty years after its separation from North Carolina, South Carolina experienced a massive slave revolt, the Stono Rebellion, which established in the minds of Southerners the need for a stringent slave code. In Georgia, the British proprietors and General James Ogelthorpe conceived of the colony as a utopian enterprise and as a consequence barred slavery. Nevertheless, the consistent failure of the colony to turn a profit and the lack of immigrants ultimately led to the abandonment of the original guiding principles of the colony, and slavery was introduced into the colony by 1750, after which Georgia began to prosper. Following the American Revolution, Georgia and South Carolina's slave codes began to become more rigorous, establishing penalties for educating slaves and miscegenation, and instituting anti-immigration laws for free blacks. In 1822 the Denmark Vesey slave conspiracy heightened fears throughout the South of a slave revolt, and provided further evidence for white Southerners of the need for legal restrictions on slave conduct and practices.

Spanish explorers had slaves with them during their exploration of Florida in 1526 and established the institution of slavery in the area with the first settlers. At the same time, in order to build up the population Spanish authorities granter freedom to fugitive slaves fleeing from British colonies, starting in 1704. Spanish immigrants also introduced slavery to Texas in the late eighteenth century. The French government of Louisiana had established a code noir for the regulation of slaves by 1724, just six years after the founding of New Orleans. French settlers imported slaves into the Biloxi, Mississippi, area in 1719 and into Alabama in 1737. James Ramsay compared French slavery with that of the English: "French slaves enjoy a great advantage for the admission of religion over English slaves, in the familiarity that French manners permit them to live in with white people: an advantage that is increased by the presence of their owners, who generally live and converse with them, superintend and partake with them in their labors" (1784, p. 274). Many observers during the colonial period believed French and Spanish slavery to be kinder in its treatment than that of the English and later the Americans.

In 1763, in the aftermath of the French and Indian War, large areas of the Spanish South fell under the control of the British. Florida and present-day Alabama and Mississippi fell under the administration of a British government in West Florida that further promoted the institution of slavery. Meanwhile, Louisiana was transferred from the French to the Spanish. The Spanish proved to be less stringent in their treatment of slaves and emancipations increased during their tenure in Louisiana.

During the American Revolutionary War many loyalists with slaves fled to regions of the Lower South, like the Mobile area, to protect their property, given the stronger British presence there. At the conclusion of the American Revolution, large areas of the Lower South, Florida, present-day Alabama, and the Natchez area of Mississippi all fell under the administration of the Spanish, while Georgia and South Carolina became part of the nowindependent United States. The Spanish encouraged slavery to draw settlers in and to better populate frontier regions. In 1795 the Pinckney Treaty opened up Mississippi and Alabama to settlement by the United States. Immigration from Virginia and the Carolinas into the Gulf coast region and the growth of cotton further solidified the institution of slavery in the area. With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 Louisiana fell under the administration of the United States. The territorial legislature in Louisiana in 1806 adopted a black code that was far more stringent than the Spanish system and the following year Louisiana made emancipations more difficult.

Though Americans tended to defend their slave code as morally, if not legally, superior, Nehemiah Adams wrote: "Spanish slavery has a very mild code, but is severe and oppressive. American slavery has perhaps as rigid a code as any; but practically, it is the mildest form of involuntary servitude, and few would justify themselves in doing no better for their slaves than the law requires" (1855, p. 193). In the Lower South, now under the administration of the United States, slavery increasingly became identified with blackness. It also became rigidly defined legally, with emancipations far more difficult to achieve. Where previously under monarchical systems slaves had certain rights as subjects, in a republic they had none, as they were not considered citizens.

In 1821, with the Adams-Onis Treaty, Florida became a territory of the United States. As in the rest of the South after the transfer, under the administration of the United States stringent slave codes were enacted. Florida barred free blacks from immigrating into the territory and outlawed miscegenation. Over the course of the 1820s American immigrants into the Mexican state of Texas came overwhelmingly from the slaveholding South; these immigrants brought slaves with them, despite Mexico's outlawing of the slave trade and the institution itself. Inhabitants of Texas, both native-born and immigrant, got around these laws by characterizing slaves as indentured servants. Once Texas established its independence, it legalized the institution of slavery and like much of the rest of the South enacted a stringent slave code. After its annexation to the United States, Texas continued to side with the rest of the pro-slavery Lower South; in 1846 it enacted a patrol system to guard against slave revolts, following the model of what already existed in other areas of the Lower South.

The Lower South was firmly committed to the institution of slavery. Upon the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln to the presidency, the seven states of the Lower South seceded over the winter of 1860–1861. They established the Confederate States of America on February 9, 1861. Only with the firing on Fort Sumter would the Upper South also choose to secede, a fact that illustrates the Lower South's stronger commitment to slavery.

General Slave Conditions

Slave conditions depended on where and in what capacity a slave worked and what sort of master a slave had. The Lower South was predominantly agrarian, far more so than the Upper South, and utilized slave labor to produce a series of crops, particularly cotton, sugar, and rice. These were labor-intensive plantation crops that utilized slaves either in a gang labor system supervised by a slave driver who assured that slaves worked at the pace set by the planter, or a task system that required slaves to complete a required minimum amount of work set by the planter. Slaves generally worked throughout the daylight hours, with a short break for a midday meal. Both men and women would work in the fields, though on large plantations there was often a stronger gender divide, with women doing lighter domestic servant work.

The majority of slaves in the Lower South lived in crude cabins and huts that were built around their owner's residence, often called the "Big House." Fanny Kemble described the residences of slaves on a Georgia rice plantation as "deplorably miserable hovels, which appeared to me to be chiefly occupied by the most decrepid [sic] and infirm samples of humanity it was ever my melancholy lot to behold" (1863, p. 113). Planters generally fed their slaves a diet of pork and cornmeal, though potatoes and rice often were corn substitutes. On holidays, like the period from Christmas to New Year's, slaves had breaks, during which they had more leisure time, received better food, and were permitted to consume alcohol. Diseases like malaria, yellow fever, typhoid, and cholera were common, due to the climate of the Lower South and poor diet and housing conditions. If they had a generous master, slaves would receive clothing twice a year, generally in the spring and fall and blankets every two years. Slaves maintained relationships and families, though these were often temporary. Slave marriages were recognized in practice, though they had no legal status, and families could be broken up through sale at the whims of their masters.

On Sundays many masters required their slaves to attend church services, during which obedience and resignation were emphasized. Slaves could take solace from Christianity, though. Hortense Powdermaker explored the manner in which religion helped slaves to make sense of their status: "For the slave, however, Christianity held out real aid in adjusting him to the conditions forced upon him. It taught him that this life was to be despised, and the greater his sufferings here the greater would be his recompense in the life to come" (1939, p. 231). Even so, this was a message unlikely to encourage resistance and thus was in the long-term interest of the slave owners. Slaves also tended to take a different message from Christianity than their masters intended, and looked to examples like God enabling the long-suffering Israelites to escape from slavery in Egypt. Other than religious services, slaves generally had Saturday afternoons and Sundays to themselves, and those with more generous masters were able to attend to their own small gardens, to hire themselves out, and to sell the fruits of their labor. Some states required owners to hire out their slaves to the state for public works projects, generally roads. In the Deep South during the first half of the nineteenth century, movement was frequently restricted: Slave patrols kept slaves confined to their plantations and written passes from masters were required for slaves traveling outside.

BLACK SLAVEHOLDERS

Black slave ownership was uncommon in the colonial era. With emancipations resulting from the American Revolution, however, a minority of free blacks in the Lower South came to be slaveholders. Both Louisiana and South Carolina had significant free black populations, and some of them chose to purchase slaves. Some free blacks purchased their own relatives and loved ones in order to later emancipate them. Other black slaveholders, however, purchased slaves, as their white colleagues did, for economic gain. While the Lower South had arguably the harshest slave regime in the United States, it also had a higher number of African American slaveholders. The number of black slaveholders declined during the 1840s and 1850s. This was due in part to white restrictions placed on free blacks throughout the Lower South, as their legal status was increasingly circumscribed and prejudice against their status increased. The decline was also due to decisions made by free blacks to turn to other economic enterprises other than farming, perhaps for moral reasons. Even so, at the onset of the Civil War there were black slaveholders in Louisiana and South Carolina who would lose significant property with the war's conclusion.

SOURCE: Boles, John B. Black Southerners, 1619–1869. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983.

Slaves worked under a system supervised either directly by the planter or through overseers and slave drivers. This system relied on slaves keeping a regular pace; if they didn't, their masters would employ violence, generally whippings. Despite these punishments, slaves often exercised as much independence as they could by slowing down or in other ways subverting the harsh regimen imposed by their owners. More blatant forms of disobedience included running away or rebelling—and indeed the Lower South was rocked by slave rebellions, such as the Denmark Vesey Conspiracy in 1822 or the Pointe Coupee Revolt in Louisiana in 1811.

In general, slaves that worked as domestic servants had a far lighter workload and more privileges than field hands. Typically, small children, the elderly, the wounded or disabled, and in some cases women engaged in far lighter work than male field hands. While the Lower South had fewer large cities and towns than other sections of the nation, slaves did work in the towns and cities of the Lower South. Urban slaves had a far greater degree of freedom than those in rural areas. They tended to work as domestic servants or possessed artisan skills, often working as carpenters, caulkers, masons, or in construction. Many of these jobs required them to hire themselves out, giving them far more control over their own labor and involvement in the market. Thus, even in the agriculturally dominated South, there was a range of slave experiences.

Slave Population

The slave population of the Lower South grew steadily from its beginnings in the colonial era and continued to expand with the region's inclusion in the United States. The interstate slave trade was such that over the course of the first half of the nineteenth century slaves from the Upper South were increasingly sold to the Lower South. As a consequence, the Lower South had a large slave population that made up a higher percentage of the overall population than was found in other areas of the United States. In this regard the Lower South was more like the Caribbean slave system than any other national region. At the same time, however, there was greater natural increase in the South than the Caribbean. Many abolitionists noted that the growth of the slave population increased human misery, even in the South, where conditions were far less conducive to a natural increase than in the North: "And, notwithstanding the drain on human life on the sugar, cotton, and rice plantations, the aggregate growth of the slave population is considerable" (Elliott, p. 274).

Even with high infant mortality rates, the Lower South had positive population growth. All the states of the Lower South had increasing slave populations, considered as percentages of the overall population, with the exception of Florida, which stayed relatively stable in its percentage. The following population growth rates are based on United States Census figures: In 1820 Alabama had a slave population of 41,879, which was 33 percent of the overall population. By 1860 the slave population had grown to 435,080, which was 45 percent of the total population. Florida had a slave population of 34,730 in 1830, making up 45 percent of the total population; the slave population would grow to 140,424, but this failed to keep pace with the overall growth in the state, as the overall slave percentage of the population actually shrank to 44 percent. The slave population of Georgia in 1790 was 29,264, or 35 percent of the total population; in 1860 it was 452,198, or 43 percent of the total population. Louisiana in 1810 had a slave population of 34,660, making up 45 percent of the state population. By 1860 the slave population had grown to 331,726, though this was largely in keeping with the growth in population as a whole, increasing the slave percentage to just 47 percent. Mississippi's slave population in 1800 was 3,489, equal to 39 percent of the state population; by 1860 it had increased to 436,631, and equaled 55 percent of the total population. South Carolina's slave population in 1790 was 107,094, around 43 percent of the state population; by 1860 it was 402,406, around 57 percent of the total population. The slave population of Texas from 1850 to 1860 increased from 58,161 to 182,566, bringing the slave population from 27 percent to 30 percent of the state total. The Lower South, far more than the Upper South, had a growing investment in slaves, and also had far more of an economic reliance on slave-based agriculture than the Upper South.

Ownership Statistics

Slaveholders were a minority even in the South, where slavery was so prevalent. Nonetheless, they wielded enormous economic clout. This would lead to charges by Charles Sumner and others that the slave owners were an oligarchy: "The actual number of slaveholders in this country was for a long time unknown and on this count naturally exaggerated. It was often represented to be very great" (Sumner 1855, p. 5). Ownership statistics can be difficult to compile as slaveholders had families and dependents with an interest in slavery, though they were not owners. In 1860 Alabama had 33,730 slave owners; Florida, 5,512; Georgia, 41,084; Louisiana, 22,033; Mississippi, 30,943; South Carolina, 26,701; and Texas, 21,878. Large plantations characterized the Lower South, far more than they did the Upper South. Planters are generally identified as those owning twenty or more slaves. Over the course of the nineteenth century an increasing number of slaves lived on such plantations, and planters, particularly in the Lower South, made up an increasing percentage of all slaveholders. Thus, while slaves were increasing numerically and as a percentage of the population, the percentage of white who owned slaves actually decreased as the concentration of holdings continued as a trend. Even so, slaveholding was more widespread in the Lower South than in the Upper South. The seven states of the Lower South by 1860 had the highest percentage of slaveholding families. In Mississippi, 49 percent of the total number of free households were slave owners; in South Carolina, 46 percent were; in Georgia, 37 percent; in Alabama, 35 percent; in Florida, 34 percent; in Louisiana, 29 percent; and in Texas, 28 percent. Even though small slaveholders were losing out to large planters, the Lower South, with its economy and social structure firmly based on slave agriculture, had far higher rates of slaveholding than did the Upper South.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adams, Nehemiah. A South-Side View of Slavery, or, Three Months at the South in 1854, 3rd edition. Boston, 1855. Available online in Sources in U.S. History Online: Slavery in America. Gale. Available at http://galenet.galegroup.com.

Ashworth, John. Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.

Boles, John B. Black Southerners, 1619–1869. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983.

Chase, Henry, and C. H. Sanborn. The North and the South: Being a Statistical View of the Condition of the Free and Slave States. Boston: John P. Jewett and Company, 1857.

Elliott, Charles. Sinfulness of American Slavery: Proved from Its Evil Sources, Its Injustice, Its Wrongs, Its Contrariety to Many Scriptural Commands, vol. 2. Cincinnati, 1850. Available online in Sources in U.S. History Online: Slavery in America. Gale. Available at http://galenet.galegroup.com.

Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Vintage, 1974.

Jewett, Clayton E., and John O. Allen. Slavery in the South: A State-by-State History. Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 2004.

Kemble, Fanny. Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838–1839. London, 1863. Available online in Sources in U.S. History Online: Slavery in America. Gale. Available at http://galenet.galegroup.com.

Kolchin, Peter. American Slaver, 1619–1877. New York: Hill and Wang, 1993.

Powdermaker, Hortense. After Freedom: A Cultural Study in the Deep South. New York, 1939. Available online in Sources in U.S. History Online: Slavery in America. Gale. Available at http://galenet.galegroup.com.

Ramsay, James. An Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies. London, 1784. Available online in Sources in U.S. History Online: Slavery in America. Gale. Available at http://galenet.galegroup.com.

Stampp, Kenneth M. The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South. New York: Vintage, 1989.

Sumner, Charles. The Slave Oligarchy and Its Usurpations: Speech of Hon. Charles Sumner, November 2, 1855, in Faneuil Hall, Boston. Washington, DC, 1855. Available online in Sources in U.S. History Online: Slavery in America. Gale. Available at http://galenet.galegroup.com.

                                    M. K. Beauchamp