American slavery, 1619-1877 by Kolchin Peter

Author:Kolchin, Peter [Kolchin, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Geschichte 1619-1877, Slavery United History, African Americans -- History -- To 1863, Slavery -- United States -- History, Slavery, African Americans, Sklaverei, Slavernij, Geschichte (1619-1877), USA, United States
ISBN: 080902568X
Publisher: New York : Hill and Wang
Published: 1993-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

The White South: Society, Economy, Ideology

I

Slavery affected the whole South, not just the slaves. Because the antebellum South was part of the United States, Southerners inevitably had much in common with other Americans, including shared history, language, religions, and political institutions. But Southerners, both white and black, also differed from other Americans. Because the antebellum South was a slave society, not merely a society in which some people were slaves, few areas of life there escaped the touch of the peculiar institution. What is more, the centrality of slavery to the South became increasingly pronounced during the half century preceding the Civil War.

During the past two decades, scholars have probed with new sophistication the pervasive impact of slavery on the antebellum South. Slavery undergirded the Southern economy, Southern politics, and, increasingly, Southern literary expression. Slavery also buttressed the religious orthodoxy that set the South apart from the North, undermined the growth of a variety of reform movements, and helped shape virtually every facet of social relations, from the law and schooling to the position of women. By the eve of the Civil War, slavery virtually defined the South to both Southerners and

Northerners; to be “anti-Southern” in the political lexicon of the era meant to be anti-slavery, to be “pro-Southern” meant to be proslavery. Few in either North or South doubted that the South’s way of life was a reflection of that section’s slave-labor system. When the challenge to that system appeared too great, Southern political leaders demonstrated the extent to which they identified slavery as central to their world by taking their states out of the Union and into war.

II

The slave-labor system of the antebellum South was a bundle of contradictions. Established in obscurity without substantial opposition, it generated intense controversy among contemporary Americans and subsequent scholars. Rooted in the lust for profits, it fostered a paternalistic ideology that denigrated crude materialism as a “Yankee” vice. Inextricably linked to the North—and the wider world—through international markets, it produced an intense attachment to section, state, and locality that belied the growing economic interdependence of the modern world. A great success story in terms of economic growth, it left the South seriously underdeveloped both economically and socially. Directed by men whose progenitors had been forward-looking innovators, it ended up in the hands of reactionaries who distrusted reform and feared the future. Predicated upon denial of freedom to a substantial proportion of the population, it was defended by men who talked endlessly of their passionate commitment to “liberty.” No wonder it has been so hard for historians to come to terms with slavery as a socioeconomic system, or to agree on how that system shaped the South.

Historians have long debated the question of Southern “distinctiveness.” During the first half of the twentieth century, many scholars viewed slavery as a minor irritant that was needlessly blown out of proportion by irresponsible agitators, and portrayed the South as a prototypically American democracy of “yeoman farmers.” This view found additional support among “consensus” historians whose emphasis on shared American experiences and values reached its peak of influence in the 1950s; as Charles G.

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