History of the Southern United States
Encyclopedia
The history of the Southern United States reaches back hundreds of years and includes the Mississippian people, well known for their mound building. European history in the region began in the very earliest days of the exploration and colonization of North America. Spain, France, and England eventually explored and claimed parts of what is now the Southern United States
, and the cultural influences of each can still be seen in the region today. In the centuries since, the history of the Southern United States has recorded a large number of important events, including the American Revolution
, the American Civil War
, the ending of slavery
, and the American Civil Rights Movement
.
times, the only inhabitants of what is now the Southern United States were Native Americans
. The most important Native American nation in the region was the Mississippian people
, who were a Mound builder culture that flourished in the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States in the centuries leading up to European contact. The Mississippian way of life began to develop around the 10th century in the Mississippi River
Valley (for which it is named).
Notable Native American nations that developed in the South after the Mississippians include what are known as "the Five Civilized Tribes
": the Cherokee
, Chickasaw
, Choctaw
, Creek and Seminole.
These people were for the most part hunters and farmers. Some were nomadic, but others built fortified villages, as there were frequent wars between tribes. In villages, a central meeting house was the focal point and was used for ceremonial purposes, or for religious worship. Some built mounds to honor their dead. Women made pottery from clay and decorated it with depictions of people and animals. Some tribes had a caste system in which chiefs and their families were honored and a kind of nobility was alive.
helped hold the interest of many Spanish explorers, and colonization eventually followed. Juan Ponce de León
was the first European to come to the South when he landed in Florida
in 1513.
Among the first European settlements in North America were Spanish settlements in what would later become the state of Florida; the earliest was Tristán de Luna y Arellano
's failed colony in what is now Pensacola
in 1559. More successful was Pedro Menéndez de Avilés
's St. Augustine
, founded in 1565; St. Augustine remains the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the continental United States. Spain also colonized parts of Alabama
, Mississippi
, Louisiana
, and Texas
.
, located in what is now Jacksonville, Florida
, in 1562. It was established as a haven for the Huguenot
s and was founded under the leadership of René Goulaine de Laudonnière
and Jean Ribault
. It was destroyed by the Spanish from the nearby colony of St. Augustine in 1565.
Later French arrived from the north. Having established agricultural colonies in Canada and built a fur trading network with Indians in the Great Lakes area, they began to explore the Mississippi River. The French called their territory Louisiana
, in honor of their King Louis. France claimed Texas and set up several short-lived forts there, such as the one in Red River County, built in 1718. In 1817 the French pirate Jean Lafitte settled on Galveston Island; his colony there grew to more than 1,000 persons by 1818 but was abandoned in 1820. The most important French settlements were established at New Orleans and Mobile
(originally called and Bienville). Only a few settlers came from France directly, with others arriving from Haiti and Acadia
.
, the English began exploring the New World. In 1585 an expedition organized by Walter Raleigh
established the first English settlement in the New World, on Roanoke Island
, North Carolina
. The colony failed to prosper, however, and the colonists were retrieved the following year by English supply ships. In 1587, Raleigh again sent out a group of colonists to Roanoke. From this colony, the first recorded European birth in North America, a child named Virginia Dare
, was reported. That group of colonists disappeared and is known as the "Lost Colony". Many people theorize that they were either killed or taken in by local tribes.
Like New England, the South was originally settled by English Protestants, later becoming a melting pot of religions as with other parts of the country. While the earlier attempt at colonization had failed on Roanoke Island, the English established their first permanent colony in Jamestown, Virginia
, in 1607, at the mouth of the James River
, which in turn empties into Chesapeake Bay
.
Settlement of Chesapeake Bay was driven by a desire to obtain precious metal resources, specifically gold
. The colony was technically still within Spanish territorial claims, yet far enough from most Spanish settlements to avoid colonial clashes. As the "Anchor of the South", the region includes the Delmarva Peninsula
and much of coastal Virginia
, Maryland
, North Carolina
, South Carolina
, and Georgia
.
Early in the history of the colony, it became clear that the claims of gold deposits were vastly exaggerated. Referred to as the "Starving Time" of the Jamestown colony, the years from the time of landing in 1607 until 1609 were rife with famine and instability. However, Native American
support, in addition to reinforcements from Britain
, sustained the colony.
Due to continued political and economic instability, however, the charter
of the Colony of Virginia was revoked in 1624. The primary cause of this revocation was the revelation that hundreds of settlers were dead or missing following an attack in 1622 by Native American tribes led by Opechancanough. A royal charter was established for Virginia, yet the House of Burgesses
, formed in 1619, was allowed to continue as political leadership for the colony in conjunction with a royal governor
.
A key figure in the Virginia Colony and Southern political and cultural development generally was William Berkeley, who served, with some interruptions, as governor of Virginia from 1645 until 1675. His desire for an elite immigration to Virginia led to the "Second Sons" policy, in which younger sons of English aristocrats were recruited to emigrate to Virginia. Berkeley also emphasized the "headright system," the offering of large tracts of land to those arriving in the colony. This early immigration by an elite contributed to the development of an aristocratic political and social structure in the South.
Despite the early failures, English colonists continued to arrive along the southern Atlantic coast. Virginia became a prosperous English colony. The area now known as Georgia
, was also settled, though its beginnings were as a penal colony similar to what was established by the English in Australia. Prisoners bound for Australia were originally meant for Louisiana, to effect legitimate conquest of New France with civilian occupation and thus extend British North America
. This strategy was abandoned at the Treaty of Paris and because the Patriots were firm in their conviction that no White man should endure slavery, even as Black slaves were being manumitted by the abolitionist movement in the British Isles.
in 1613, its cultivation
began to form the basis of the early Southern economy. Cotton did not become a mainstay until much later, after technological developments, especially the Whitney
Cotton gin
of 1794, greatly increased the profitability of cotton
cultivation. Until that point, most cotton was farmed in large plantations in the Province of Carolina
, and tobacco, which could be grown profitably in farms of smaller scale, was the dominant cash crop
export of the South and the Middle Atlantic States.
The earliest Africans in the colonies emerged from the first introduction of black indentured servants in 1619 aboard a Dutch slave ship
until, approximately the 1660s, when slaves became a better economic labor force than indentured servant
s. The first slavery law in colonies would be put in place by Massachusetts to enslave indigenous population in 1641. However, one of Dutch African arrivals, Anthony Johnson
, would later own the first black “slave,” John Casor
. During this period, life expectancy
was often low and indentured servants came from overpopulated European areas. With the lower price of servants compared to slaves, and the high mortality of the servants, planters often found it much more economical to use servants.
Because of this, slavery in the early colonial period differed greatly in the American colonies from that in the Caribbean
. Often Caribbean slaves were worked literally to death on large sugar
and rice
plantations, while the American slave population had a higher life expectancy and was maintained through natural reproduction. This natural reproduction was important for the continuation of slavery after the prohibition on slave importation in 1808 by the United States Constitution
.
Much of the slave trade was conducted as part of the "Triangular Trade
", a three-way exchange of slaves, rum, and sugar. Northern shippers purchased slaves using rum
, made in New England
from cane sugar, which was in turn grown in the Caribbean. This slave trade was generally able to fulfill labor needs in the South for the cultivation of tobacco after the decline of indentured servants. Most of the slaves brought to America refused to eat, wanting to die rather than to work for nothing.
At approximately the point when tobacco labor needs began to increase, the mortality of the colonies decreased. By the late 17th century and early 18th century, slaves became economically viable sources of labor for the growing tobacco culture. Also, further South than the Mid-Atlantic, Southern settlers grew wealthy by raising and selling rice, indigo
, and cotton. The plantations of South Carolina
often were modeled on Caribbean plantations, yet never attained similar size.
, Province of Maryland
, Province of North Carolina
, Province of South Carolina
, and Virginia Colony.
By the end of the 17th century, the number of colonists was growing. The large population centers were still in the northeastern and middle colonies, leaving the southern colonies of Maryland
, Virginia
, North
and South Carolina
a rural frontier land. The economies of these colonies were tied to agriculture. During this time the great plantation
s were formed by wealthy colonists who saw great opportunity in the new country. Tobacco
and cotton
were the main cash crops of the areas and were readily accepted by English buyers. Rice
and indigo
were also grown in the area and exported to Europe. The plantation owners built a vast aristocratic life and accumulated a great deal of wealth from their land. They supported slavery as a means of working their land and tended to keep close ties with the European cultural circles.
On the other side of the agricultural coin were the small yeoman farmers. They did not have the capability or wealth to operate large plantations. Instead, they worked small tracts of land and developed a political activism in response to the growing oligarchy
of the plantation owners. Many politicians from this era were yeoman farmers speaking out to protect their rights as free men.
Charleston
became a booming trade town for the southern colonies. The abundance of pine
trees in the area provided raw materials for shipyards to develop and the harbor provided a safe port for English ships bringing in imported goods. The colonists exported tobacco, cotton and textiles and imported tea, sugar and slaves. The fact that these colonies maintained an independent trade relation with England and the rest of Europe became a major factor later on as tension mounted leading up to the American Revolutionary War
.
After the late 17th century, the economies of the North and the South began to diverge, especially in coastal areas. The Southern emphasis on export production contrasted with the Northern emphasis on food production.
By the mid-18th century, the colonies of Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia had been established. In the upper colonies, that is, Maryland, Virginia, and portions of North Carolina, the tobacco culture prevailed. However, in the lower colonies of South Carolina and Georgia, cultivation focused more on cotton and rice.
, the South found political stability, with little federal interference in state affairs. However, with this stability came weakness by design, and the inability of the Confederation to maintain economic viability eventually forced the creation of the United States Constitution
in Philadelphia in 1787. Importantly, Southerners of 1861 often believed their secessionist efforts and the Civil War
paralleled the American Revolution, as a military and ideological "replay" of the latter.
Southern leaders were able to protect their sectional interests during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, preventing the insertion of any explicit anti-slavery position in the Constitution. Moreover, they were able to force the inclusion of the "fugitive slave clause" and the "Three-Fifths Compromise
". Nevertheless, Congress retained the power to regulate the slave trade, and 20 years after the ratification of the Constitution, Congress prohibited the importation of slaves effective January 1, 1808. While North and South were able to find common ground in order to gain the benefits of a strong Union, the unity achieved in the Constitution masked deeply rooted differences in economic and political interests. After the convention, two emerging understandings of American republicanism
came to loggerheads.
For the North, a Puritanical republicanism predominated, with leaders such as Alexander Hamilton
and John Adams
. In the South, Agrarian republicanism formed the basis of political culture. While both attempted to preserve their "way of life" in order to preserve the Union, their methods of this preservation were quite different. While Northern republicans aimed to make better people and thus ensure the survival of democracy, Southerners focused on making better conditions. Led by Thomas Jefferson
and James Madison
, the Agrarian republican position is characterized by the epitaph
on the grave of Jefferson. While including his "condition bettering" roles in the foundation of the University of Virginia
, and the writing of the Declaration of Independence
and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom
, absent was his role in the federal government as president of the United States
. Southern development of political thought thus focused on the ideal of the yeoman
farmer; i.e., those who are tied to the land also have a vested interest in the stability and survival of the government.
issue, most were indifferent, and some even believed that the abolition of slavery would be detrimental to their economic interests. As for Southerners, before the cotton boom, large plantations with dozens or hundreds of slaves were rare, and usually found in the Deep South
. The vast majority of Southerners never owned slaves. Most were independent yeoman farmers much like their counterparts in the North. Nevertheless, the slave system represented the basis of the Southern social and economic system, and thus even non-slaveowners often violently opposed any suggestions for terminating that system, whether through abolition
or gradual emancipation
.
This chart shows how dependent the south was on foreign trade, and why it was so violently opposed to abolition, since slaves provided the labor needed to support the cotton economy.
and Nullification crisis
Although slavery had yet to become a major issue, states' rights
issues surfaced periodically in the early antebellum period, especially in the South. The election of Federalist
John Adams
in the 1796 presidential election came in tandem with escalating tensions with France. In 1798, the XYZ Affair
brought these tensions to the fore, and Adams became concerned about French power in America, fearing internal sabotage
and malcontent brought on by French agents. In response to these developments and to repeated attacks on Adams and the Federalists by Democratic-Republican publishers, Congress enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts
. Enforcement of the acts resulted in the jailing of "seditious" Democratic-Republican editors throughout the North and South, and prompted the adoption of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions
of 1798 (authored by Thomas Jefferson
and James Madison
), by the legislatures of those states.
Thirty years later, during the "Nullification" crisis, the "Principles of '98" embodied in these resolutions were cited by leaders in South Carolina as a justification for state legislatures' asserting the power to nullify, or prevent the local application of, acts of the federal Congress that they deemed unconstitutional. The Nullification crisis
arose as a result of the Tariff of 1828
, a set of high taxes on imports of manufactures, enacted by Congress as a protectionist measure to foster the development of domestic industry, primarily in the North. In 1832, the legislature of South Carolina nullified the entire "Tariff of Abominations," as the Tariff of 1828 was known in the South, prompting a stand-off between the state and federal government. Although the crisis was resolved through a combination of the actions of President Andrew Jackson
, Congressional reduction of the tariff, and the Force Bill
, it had lasting importance for the later development of secession
ist thought.
At the same time, Southerners increasingly perceived the economic and population growth of the North as threatening to their interests. For several decades after the Union was formed, as new states were admitted, North and South were able to finesse their sectional differences and maintain political balance by agreeing to admit "slave" and "free" states in equal numbers. By means of this compromise approach, the balance of power in the Senate could be extended indefinitely. The House of Representatives, however, was a different matter. As the North industrialized and its population grew, aided by a major influx of European immigrants, the Northern majority in the House of Representatives also grew, making Southern political leaders increasingly uncomfortable. Southerners became concerned that they would soon find themselves at the mercy of a federal government in which they no longer had sufficient representation to protect their interests. By the late 1840s, Senator Jefferson Davis
from Mississippi
stated that the new Northern majority in the Congress would make the government of the United States "an engine of Northern aggrandizement" and that Northern leaders had an agenda to "promote the industry of the United States at the expense of the people of the South."
With the Mexican War
, which alarmed many Northerners by adding new territory on the Southern side of the free-slave boundary, the slavery-in-the-territories issue heated up dramatically. After a four-year sectional conflict the Compromise of 1850
narrowly averted civil war with a complex deal in which California was admitted as a free state including Southern California
thus preventing a separate slave territory there, while slavery was allowed in the New Mexico and Utah territories and a stronger Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed requiring all citizens to assist in recapturing runaway slaves wherever found. Four years later, the peace bought with successive compromises finally came to an end. In the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Congress left the issue of slavery to a vote in each territory, thereby provoking a breakdown of law and order as rival groups of pro- and anti-slavery immigrants competed to populate the newly settled region.
was elected president with only 40% of the popular vote and with hardly any popular support in the South. Lincoln did not win the electoral votes of any Southern state, and only 2 of the 996 counties of the South voted for him. Reference:U.S. presidential election, 1860
Members of the South Carolina
legislature had previously sworn to secede from the Union if Lincoln was elected, and the state declared its secession on December 20, 1860. In January and February, six other cotton states of the Deep South followed suit: Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. The other eight slave states postponed a decision, but the seven formed a new government in Montgomery, Alabama in February: the Confederate States of America
. Throughout the South, Confederates seized federal arsenals and forts, without resistance, and forced the surrender of all U.S. forces in Texas. The sitting President, James Buchanan
, believed he had no constitutional power to act, and in the four months between Lincoln's election and his inauguration, the South strengthened its military position.
In Washington, proposals for compromise and reunion went nowhere, as the Confederates demanded complete, total, permanent independence. When Lincoln dispatched a supply ship to federal-held Fort Sumter
, in South Carolina, the Confederate government ordered an attack on the fort, which surrendered on April 13. President Lincoln called upon the states to supply 75,000 troops to serve for ninety days to recover federal property, and, forced to choose sides, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina promptly voted to secede. Kentucky declared its neutrality.
Both sides wanted the border states, but the Union military forces took control of all of them in 1861-1862. Union victories in western Virginia allowed a Unionist government based in Wheeling
to take control of western Virginia and, with Washington's approval, create the new state of West Virginia. The Confederacy did recruit troops in the border states, but the enormous advantage of controlling them went to the Union.
The Union naval blockade
starting in May 1861, reducing exports by 95%; only small, fast blockade runners—mostly owned and operated by British interests—could get through. The South's vast cotton crops became nearly worthless.
In 1861 the rebels assumed that "King Cotton
" was so powerful that the threat of losing their supplies would induce Britain and France to enter the war as allies, and thereby frustrate Union efforts. Confederate leaders were ignorant of European conditions; Britain depended on the Union for its food supply, and would not benefit from an extremely expensive major war with the U.S. The Confederacy moved its capital from a defensible location in remote Montgomery, Alabama, to the more cosmopolitan city of Richmond, Virginia, only 100 miles from Washington. Richmond had the heritage and facilities to match those of Washington, but its proximity to the Union forced the CSA to spend most of its war-making capability to defend Richmond.
Historians continue to debate the effectiveness of President Jefferson Davis
, with a consensus holding that he was much less effective than Abraham Lincoln. As a former Army officer, senator, and Secretary of War, he possessed the stature and experience to be president, but certain character defects undercut his performance. He played favorites, was imperious, frosty, and quarrelsome. By dispensing with parties, he lost the chance to build a grass roots network that would provide critically needed support in dark hours. Instead, he took the brunt of the blame for all difficulties and disasters. Davis was animated by a profound vision of a powerful, opulent new nation, the Confederate States of America, premised on the right of its white citizens to self government. However, in dramatic contrast to Lincoln, he was never able to articulate that vision or provide a coherent strategy to fight the war. He neglected the civilian needs of the Confederacy while spending too much time meddling in military details. Davis's meddling in military strategy proved counterproductive. His explicit orders that Vicksburg be held no matter what led sabotaged the only feasible defense and led directly to the fall of the city in 1863.
issued the Emancipation Proclamation
on January 1, 1863, and it immediately began taking effect. By the end of war, the Proclamation had freed practically all the slaves in the Confederacy. The Thirteenth Amendment
, ratified in December 1865, made slavery illegal, leaving millions of ex-slaves now in the status of Freedmen. Nearly all slaves were emancipated with no compensation to their masters, as the proposals by Lincoln to purchase slaves had all been rejected.
completely cut off such imports. The lines in the South were mostly designed for short hauls, as from cotton areas to river or ocean ports; they were not designed for trips of more than 100 miles or so, and such trips involved numerous changes of trains and layovers. The South's 8,500 miles of track comprised enough of a railroad system to handle essential military traffic along some internal lines, assuming it could be defended and maintained. As the system deteriorated because of worn out equipment, accidents and sabotage, the South was unable to construct or even repair new locomotives, cars, signals or track. Little new equipment ever arrived, although rails in remote areas such as Florida were removed and put to more efficient use in the war zones. Realizing their enemy's dilemma, Union cavalry raids routinely destroyed locomotives, cars, rails, roundhouses, trestles, bridges, and telegraph wires. By the end of the war, the southern railroad system was totally ruined—used up, worn out, or burned out. Meanwhile the Union army rebuilt rail lines to supply its forces. A Union railroad through hostile territory, as from Nashville to Atlanta in 1864, was an essential but fragile lifeline—it took a whole army to guard it, because each foot of track had to be secure. Large numbers of Union soldiers throughout the war were assigned to guard duty and, while always ready for action, seldom saw any fighting.
and William T. Sherman realized the weakest point of the Confederate armies was the decrepitude of the southern infrastructure, so they escalated efforts to wear it down. Cavalry raids were the favorite device, with instructions to ruin railroads and bridges. Sherman's insight was deeper. He focused on the trust the rebels had in their Confederacy as a living nation, and he set out to destroy that trust; he predicted his raid would "demonstrate the vulnerability of the South, and make its inhabitants feel that war and individual ruin are synonymous terms.". Sherman's "March To the Sea," from Atlanta to Savannah in fall, 1864, burned and broke and ruined every part of the industrial, commercial, transportation and agricultural infrastructure it touched, but the actual damage was confined to a swath of territory totaling about 15% of Georgia. Sherman struck at Georgia in October, just after the harvest, when the food supplies for the next year had been gathered and were exposed to destruction. In early 1865 Sherman's army moved north through the Carolinas in a campaign even more devastating than the March Through Georgia. More telling than the twisted rails, smoldering main streets, dead cattle, burning barns and ransacked houses was the bitter realization among civilians and soldiers throughout the remaining Confederacy that if they persisted, sooner or later their homes and communities would receive the same treatment.
Out-gunned, out-manned, and out-financed, defeat loomed after four years of fighting. When Lee surrendered to Grant in April 1865, the Confederacy fell; there was no insurgency, no treason trials, and only one war crimes trial.
The Confederate army lost 94,000 killed in battle and another 164,000 who died of disease. Official counts of the wounded are far too low, at 194,000. The number of civilian deaths is unknown. Most of the war was fought in Virginia and Tennessee, but every Southern state was affected as well as Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky Missouri, and Indian Territory; Pennsylvania was the only northerner state to be the scene of major action, during the Gettysburg campaign. In the Confederacy there was little military action in Texas and Florida. Of 645 counties in 9 Confederate states (excluding Texas and Florida), there was Union military action in 56% of them, containing 63% of the whites and 64% of the slaves in 1860; however by the time the action took place some people had fled to safer areas, so the exact population exposed to war is unknown.
The Confederacy in 1861 had 297 towns and cities with 835,000 people; of these 162 with 681,000 people were at one point occupied by Union forces. Eleven were destroyed or severely damaged by war action, including Atlanta (with an 1860 population of 9,600), Charleston, Columbia, and Richmond (with prewar populations of 40,500, 8,100, and 37,900, respectively); the eleven contained 115,900 people in the 1860 census, or 14% of the urban South. Historians have not estimated their population when they were invaded. The number of people who lived in the destroyed towns represented just over 1% of the Confederacy's population. In addition, 45 court houses were burned (out of 830). The South's agriculture was not highly mechanized. The value of farm implements and machinery in the 1860 Census was $81 million; by 1870, there was 40% less, of $48 million worth. Many old tools had broken through heavy use and could not be replaced; even repairs were difficult.
The economic calamity suffered by the South during the war affected every family. Except for land, most assets and investments had vanished with slavery, but debts were left behind. Worst of all were the human deaths and amputations. Most farms were intact but most had lost their horses, mules and cattle; fences and barns were in disrepair. Prices for cotton had plunged. The rebuilding would take years and require outside investment because the devastation was so thorough. One historian has summarized the collapse of the transportation infrastructure needed for economic recovery:
Railroad mileage was of course located mostly in rural areas. The war followed the rails, and over two-thirds of the South's rails, bridges, rail yards, repair shops and rolling stock were in areas reached by Union armies, which systematically destroyed what it could. The South had 9400 miles of track and 6500 miles was in areas reached by the Union armies. About 4400 miles were in areas where Sherman and other Union generals adopted a policy of systematic destruction of the rail system. Even in untouched areas, the lack of maintenance and repair, the absence of new equipment, the heavy over-use, and the deliberate movement of equipment by the Confederates from remote areas to the war zone guaranteed the system would be virtually ruined at war's end.
that lasted 1865-66. The Freedman's Bureau was active, helping refugees, setting up employment contracts for Freedmen, and setting up courts and schools for the Freedmen. Second came rule by the U.S. Army, which held elections that included all Freedmen but excluded over 10,000 Confederate leaders. Third was "Radical Reconstruction" or "Black Reconstruction" in which a Republican coalition governed the state, comprising a coalition of Freedmen, Scalawag
s (native whites) and Carpetbagger
s (migrants from the North). Violent resistance by the Ku Klux Klan
and related groups was suppressed by President Ulysses S. Grant
and the vigorous use of federal courts and soldiers in 1868-70. The Reconstruction governments spent large sums on railroad subsidies and schools, but quadrupled taxes and set off a tax revolt among conservatives. Stage four was reached by 1876 as the conservative coalition, called Redeemers
, had won political control of all the states except South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana. The disputed presidential election of 1876 hinged on those three violently contested states. The outcome was the Compromise of 1877
whereby the Republican Rutherford Hayes became president and all federal troops were withdrawn from the South, leading to the immediate collapse of the last Republican state governments.
, equipment and standards of service. the Southern network expanded from 11,000 miles (17,700 km) in 1870 to 29,000 miles (46,700 km) in 1890. Railroads helped create a mechanically skilled group of craftsmen and broke the isolation of much of the region. Passengers were few, however, and apart from hauling the cotton crop when it was harvested, there was little freight traffic. The lines were owned and directed overwhelmingly by Northerners, who often had to pay heavy bribes to corrupt politicians for needed legislation.
The Panic of 1873
ended the expansion everywhere in the United States, leaving many Southern lines bankrupt or barely able to pay the interest on their bonds.
to the Constitution
(which outlawed slavery), the 14th Amendment
(which granted full U.S. citizenship to African American
s) and the 15th Amendment
(which extended the right to vote to black males), African Americans in the South began to enjoy more rights than they had ever had in the past.
took control in the mid 1870s, Jim Crow laws were created to legally enforce racial segregation
. The most extreme white leader was Senator Ben Tillman of South Carolina
, who proudly proclaimed in 1900, "We have done our level best [to prevent blacks from voting]...we have scratched our heads to find out how we could eliminate the last one of them. We stuffed ballot boxes. We shot them. We are not ashamed of it." (Logan, p. 91)
With no voting rights and no voice in government, Blacks in the South were subjected to a system of segregation and discrimination. Blacks and whites attended separate schools. Blacks could not serve on juries, which meant that they had little if any legal recourse. In Black Boy
, an autobiographical account of life during this time, Richard Wright
writes about being struck with a bottle and knocked from a moving truck for failing to call a white man "sir" (Wright, Chapter Nine). Between 1889 and 1922, the NAACP calculates that lynchings reached their worst level in history, with almost 3,500 people, three-fourths of them black men, murdered.http://uncpress.unc.edu/chapters/estes_i.html
In response to this treatment, the South witnessed two major events in the lives of 20th century African Americans: the Great Migration
and the American Civil Rights Movement.
The Great Migration began during World War I
, hitting its high point during World War II
. During this migration, Black people left the racism and lack of opportunities in the South and settled in northern cities like Chicago, where they found work in factories and other sectors of the economy. (Katzman, 1996) This migration produced a new sense of independence in the Black community and contributed to the vibrant Black urban culture seen during the Harlem Renaissance
.
The migration also empowered the growing American Civil Rights Movement. While the Civil Rights movement existed in all parts of the United States, its focus was against the Jim Crow laws in the South. Most of the major events in the movement occurred in the South, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott
, the Mississippi Freedom Summer
, the March on Selma, Alabama
, and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
. In addition, some of the most important writings to come out of the movement were written in the South, such as King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail
".
As a result of the Civil Rights Laws of 1964 and 1965, all Jim Crow laws across the South were dropped. This change in the South's racial climate combined with the new industrialization in the region to help usher in what is called the New South
.
Agriculture's Share of the Labor Force by Region, 1890
This industrialization and modernization of the South picked up speed with the ending of racial segregation laws in the 1970s. Today, the economy of the South is a diverse mixture of agriculture, light and heavy industry, tourism, and high technology companies, and is becoming increasingly integrated into the global economy
. With the expansion of jobs in the South, there has been migration of people from northern and midwestern regions for work, increasing population and political influence of southern states.
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
, and the cultural influences of each can still be seen in the region today. In the centuries since, the history of the Southern United States has recorded a large number of important events, including the American Revolution
American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
, the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, the ending of slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
, and the American Civil Rights Movement
African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)
The African-American Civil Rights Movement refers to the movements in the United States aimed at outlawing racial discrimination against African Americans and restoring voting rights to them. This article covers the phase of the movement between 1955 and 1968, particularly in the South...
.
Native American civilizations
In Pre-ColumbianPre-Columbian
The pre-Columbian era incorporates all period subdivisions in the history and prehistory of the Americas before the appearance of significant European influences on the American continents, spanning the time of the original settlement in the Upper Paleolithic period to European colonization during...
times, the only inhabitants of what is now the Southern United States were Native Americans
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
. The most important Native American nation in the region was the Mississippian people
Mississippian culture
The Mississippian culture was a mound-building Native American culture that flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from approximately 800 CE to 1500 CE, varying regionally....
, who were a Mound builder culture that flourished in the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States in the centuries leading up to European contact. The Mississippian way of life began to develop around the 10th century in the Mississippi River
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the largest river system in North America. Flowing entirely in the United States, this river rises in western Minnesota and meanders slowly southwards for to the Mississippi River Delta at the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains...
Valley (for which it is named).
Notable Native American nations that developed in the South after the Mississippians include what are known as "the Five Civilized Tribes
Five Civilized Tribes
The Five Civilized Tribes were the five Native American nations—the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole—that were considered civilized by Anglo-European settlers during the colonial and early federal period because they adopted many of the colonists' customs and had generally good...
": the Cherokee
Cherokee
The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
, Chickasaw
Chickasaw
The Chickasaw are Native American people originally from the region that would become the Southeastern United States...
, Choctaw
Choctaw
The Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States...
, Creek and Seminole.
These people were for the most part hunters and farmers. Some were nomadic, but others built fortified villages, as there were frequent wars between tribes. In villages, a central meeting house was the focal point and was used for ceremonial purposes, or for religious worship. Some built mounds to honor their dead. Women made pottery from clay and decorated it with depictions of people and animals. Some tribes had a caste system in which chiefs and their families were honored and a kind of nobility was alive.
Spanish exploration
After Christopher Columbus discovered the West Indies, Spain made frequent exploratory trips to the New World. Rumors of natives being decorated with gold and stories of a Fountain of YouthFountain of Youth
The Fountain of Youth is a legendary spring that reputedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks of its waters. Tales of such a fountain have been recounted across the world for thousands of years, appearing in writings by Herodotus, the Alexander romance, and the stories of Prester John...
helped hold the interest of many Spanish explorers, and colonization eventually followed. Juan Ponce de León
Juan Ponce de León
Juan Ponce de León was a Spanish explorer. He became the first Governor of Puerto Rico by appointment of the Spanish crown. He led the first European expedition to Florida, which he named...
was the first European to come to the South when he landed in Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
in 1513.
Among the first European settlements in North America were Spanish settlements in what would later become the state of Florida; the earliest was Tristán de Luna y Arellano
Tristán de Luna y Arellano
Tristán de Luna y Arellano was a Spanish Conquistador of the 16th century. Born in Borobia, Spain, he came to New Spain in about 1530, and was sent on an expedition to conquer Florida in 1559...
's failed colony in what is now Pensacola
Pensacola, Florida
Pensacola is the westernmost city in the Florida Panhandle and the county seat of Escambia County, Florida, United States of America. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 56,255 and as of 2009, the estimated population was 53,752...
in 1559. More successful was Pedro Menéndez de Avilés
Pedro Menéndez de Avilés
Pedro Menéndez de Avilés was a Spanish admiral and explorer, best remembered for founding St. Augustine, Florida in 1565. This was the first successful Spanish foothold in La Florida and remained the most significant city in the region for several hundred years. St...
's St. Augustine
St. Augustine, Florida
St. Augustine is a city in the northeast section of Florida and the county seat of St. Johns County, Florida, United States. Founded in 1565 by Spanish explorer and admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, it is the oldest continuously occupied European-established city and port in the continental United...
, founded in 1565; St. Augustine remains the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the continental United States. Spain also colonized parts of Alabama
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
, Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
, Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
, and Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
.
French colonization
The first French settlement in what is now the Southern United States was Fort CarolineFort Caroline
Fort Caroline was the first French colony in the present-day United States. Established in what is now Jacksonville, Florida, on June 22, 1564, under the leadership of René Goulaine de Laudonnière, it was intended as a refuge for the Huguenots. It lasted one year before being obliterated by the...
, located in what is now Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Florida in terms of both population and land area, and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. It is the county seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968...
, in 1562. It was established as a haven for the Huguenot
Huguenot
The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...
s and was founded under the leadership of René Goulaine de Laudonnière
René Goulaine de Laudonnière
René Goulaine de Laudonnière was a French Huguenot explorer and the founder of the French colony of Fort Caroline in what is now Jacksonville, Florida...
and Jean Ribault
Jean Ribault
Jean Ribault was a French naval officer, navigator, and a colonizer of what would become the southeastern United States. He was a major figure in the French attempts to colonize Florida...
. It was destroyed by the Spanish from the nearby colony of St. Augustine in 1565.
Later French arrived from the north. Having established agricultural colonies in Canada and built a fur trading network with Indians in the Great Lakes area, they began to explore the Mississippi River. The French called their territory Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
, in honor of their King Louis. France claimed Texas and set up several short-lived forts there, such as the one in Red River County, built in 1718. In 1817 the French pirate Jean Lafitte settled on Galveston Island; his colony there grew to more than 1,000 persons by 1818 but was abandoned in 1820. The most important French settlements were established at New Orleans and Mobile
Mobile, Alabama
Mobile is the third most populous city in the Southern US state of Alabama and is the county seat of Mobile County. It is located on the Mobile River and the central Gulf Coast of the United States. The population within the city limits was 195,111 during the 2010 census. It is the largest...
(originally called and Bienville). Only a few settlers came from France directly, with others arriving from Haiti and Acadia
Acadia
Acadia was the name given to lands in a portion of the French colonial empire of New France, in northeastern North America that included parts of eastern Quebec, the Maritime provinces, and modern-day Maine. At the end of the 16th century, France claimed territory stretching as far south as...
.
British colonial era (1607-1775)
Just before they defeated the Spanish ArmadaSpanish Armada
This article refers to the Battle of Gravelines, for the modern navy of Spain, see Spanish NavyThe Spanish Armada was the Spanish fleet that sailed against England under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia in 1588, with the intention of overthrowing Elizabeth I of England to stop English...
, the English began exploring the New World. In 1585 an expedition organized by Walter Raleigh
Walter Raleigh
Sir Walter Raleigh was an English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer. He is also well known for popularising tobacco in England....
established the first English settlement in the New World, on Roanoke Island
Roanoke Island
Roanoke Island is an island in Dare County near the coast of North Carolina, United States. It was named after the historical Roanoke Carolina Algonquian people who inhabited the area in the 16th century at the time of English exploration....
, North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
. The colony failed to prosper, however, and the colonists were retrieved the following year by English supply ships. In 1587, Raleigh again sent out a group of colonists to Roanoke. From this colony, the first recorded European birth in North America, a child named Virginia Dare
Virginia Dare
Virginia Dare was the first child born in the Americas to English parents, Eleanor and Ananias Dare. She was born into the short-lived Roanoke Colony in what is now North Carolina, USA. What became of Virginia and the other colonists remains a mystery...
, was reported. That group of colonists disappeared and is known as the "Lost Colony". Many people theorize that they were either killed or taken in by local tribes.
Like New England, the South was originally settled by English Protestants, later becoming a melting pot of religions as with other parts of the country. While the earlier attempt at colonization had failed on Roanoke Island, the English established their first permanent colony in Jamestown, Virginia
Jamestown, Virginia
Jamestown was a settlement in the Colony of Virginia. Established by the Virginia Company of London as "James Fort" on May 14, 1607 , it was the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States, following several earlier failed attempts, including the Lost Colony of Roanoke...
, in 1607, at the mouth of the James River
James River (Virginia)
The James River is a river in the U.S. state of Virginia. It is long, extending to if one includes the Jackson River, the longer of its two source tributaries. The James River drains a catchment comprising . The watershed includes about 4% open water and an area with a population of 2.5 million...
, which in turn empties into Chesapeake Bay
Chesapeake Bay
The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. It lies off the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by Maryland and Virginia. The Chesapeake Bay's drainage basin covers in the District of Columbia and parts of six states: New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and West...
.
Settlement of Chesapeake Bay was driven by a desire to obtain precious metal resources, specifically gold
Gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...
. The colony was technically still within Spanish territorial claims, yet far enough from most Spanish settlements to avoid colonial clashes. As the "Anchor of the South", the region includes the Delmarva Peninsula
Delmarva Peninsula
The Delmarva Peninsula is a large peninsula on the East Coast of the United States, occupied by most of Delaware and portions of Maryland and Virginia...
and much of coastal Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
, Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
, North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
, South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
, and Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
.
Early in the history of the colony, it became clear that the claims of gold deposits were vastly exaggerated. Referred to as the "Starving Time" of the Jamestown colony, the years from the time of landing in 1607 until 1609 were rife with famine and instability. However, Native American
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
support, in addition to reinforcements from Britain
Early Modern Britain
Early modern Britain is the history of the island of Great Britain, roughly corresponding to the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Major historical events in Early Modern British history include the English Renaissance, the English Reformation and Scottish Reformation, the English Civil War, the...
, sustained the colony.
Due to continued political and economic instability, however, the charter
Charter
A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified...
of the Colony of Virginia was revoked in 1624. The primary cause of this revocation was the revelation that hundreds of settlers were dead or missing following an attack in 1622 by Native American tribes led by Opechancanough. A royal charter was established for Virginia, yet the House of Burgesses
House of Burgesses
The House of Burgesses was the first assembly of elected representatives of English colonists in North America. The House was established by the Virginia Company, who created the body as part of an effort to encourage English craftsmen to settle in North America...
, formed in 1619, was allowed to continue as political leadership for the colony in conjunction with a royal governor
Governor
A governor is a governing official, usually the executive of a non-sovereign level of government, ranking under the head of state...
.
A key figure in the Virginia Colony and Southern political and cultural development generally was William Berkeley, who served, with some interruptions, as governor of Virginia from 1645 until 1675. His desire for an elite immigration to Virginia led to the "Second Sons" policy, in which younger sons of English aristocrats were recruited to emigrate to Virginia. Berkeley also emphasized the "headright system," the offering of large tracts of land to those arriving in the colony. This early immigration by an elite contributed to the development of an aristocratic political and social structure in the South.
Despite the early failures, English colonists continued to arrive along the southern Atlantic coast. Virginia became a prosperous English colony. The area now known as Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
, was also settled, though its beginnings were as a penal colony similar to what was established by the English in Australia. Prisoners bound for Australia were originally meant for Louisiana, to effect legitimate conquest of New France with civilian occupation and thus extend British North America
British North America
British North America is a historical term. It consisted of the colonies and territories of the British Empire in continental North America after the end of the American Revolutionary War and the recognition of American independence in 1783.At the start of the Revolutionary War in 1775 the British...
. This strategy was abandoned at the Treaty of Paris and because the Patriots were firm in their conviction that no White man should endure slavery, even as Black slaves were being manumitted by the abolitionist movement in the British Isles.
Rise of tobacco culture and slavery in the colonial South
From the introduction of tobaccoTobacco
Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...
in 1613, its cultivation
Tillage
Tillage is the agricultural preparation of the soil by mechanical agitation of various types, such as digging, stirring, and overturning. Examples of human-powered tilling methods using hand tools include shovelling, picking, mattock work, hoeing, and raking...
began to form the basis of the early Southern economy. Cotton did not become a mainstay until much later, after technological developments, especially the Whitney
Eli Whitney
Eli Whitney was an American inventor best known for inventing the cotton gin. This was one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution and shaped the economy of the Antebellum South...
Cotton gin
Cotton gin
A cotton gin is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, a job formerly performed painstakingly by hand...
of 1794, greatly increased the profitability of cotton
Cotton
Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....
cultivation. Until that point, most cotton was farmed in large plantations in the Province of Carolina
Province of Carolina
The Province of Carolina, originally chartered in 1629, was an English and later British colony of North America. Because the original Heath charter was unrealized and was ruled invalid, a new charter was issued to a group of eight English noblemen, the Lords Proprietors, in 1663...
, and tobacco, which could be grown profitably in farms of smaller scale, was the dominant cash crop
Cash crop
In agriculture, a cash crop is a crop which is grown for profit.The term is used to differentiate from subsistence crops, which are those fed to the producer's own livestock or grown as food for the producer's family...
export of the South and the Middle Atlantic States.
Slave ship
Slave ships were large cargo ships specially converted for the purpose of transporting slaves, especially newly purchased African slaves to Americas....
until, approximately the 1660s, when slaves became a better economic labor force than indentured servant
Indentured servant
Indentured servitude refers to the historical practice of contracting to work for a fixed period of time, typically three to seven years, in exchange for transportation, food, clothing, lodging and other necessities during the term of indenture. Usually the father made the arrangements and signed...
s. The first slavery law in colonies would be put in place by Massachusetts to enslave indigenous population in 1641. However, one of Dutch African arrivals, Anthony Johnson
Anthony Johnson (American Colonial)
Anthony Johnson was an Angolan African held as an indentured servant by a merchant in the Colony of Virginia in 1620, but later freed to become a successful tobacco farmer and owner...
, would later own the first black “slave,” John Casor
John Casor
John Casor , a servant in Northampton County in the Virginia Colony, in 1654 became the first person of African descent in the Thirteen Colonies to be declared by the county court a slave for life. In one of the earliest freedom suits, Casor argued that he was an indentured servant who had been...
. During this period, life expectancy
Life expectancy
Life expectancy is the expected number of years of life remaining at a given age. It is denoted by ex, which means the average number of subsequent years of life for someone now aged x, according to a particular mortality experience...
was often low and indentured servants came from overpopulated European areas. With the lower price of servants compared to slaves, and the high mortality of the servants, planters often found it much more economical to use servants.
Because of this, slavery in the early colonial period differed greatly in the American colonies from that in the Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
. Often Caribbean slaves were worked literally to death on large sugar
Sugar
Sugar is a class of edible crystalline carbohydrates, mainly sucrose, lactose, and fructose, characterized by a sweet flavor.Sucrose in its refined form primarily comes from sugar cane and sugar beet...
and rice
Rice
Rice is the seed of the monocot plants Oryza sativa or Oryza glaberrima . As a cereal grain, it is the most important staple food for a large part of the world's human population, especially in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and the West Indies...
plantations, while the American slave population had a higher life expectancy and was maintained through natural reproduction. This natural reproduction was important for the continuation of slavery after the prohibition on slave importation in 1808 by the United States Constitution
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...
.
Much of the slave trade was conducted as part of the "Triangular Trade
Triangular trade
Triangular trade, or triangle trade, is a historical term indicating among three ports or regions. Triangular trade usually evolves when a region has export commodities that are not required in the region from which its major imports come...
", a three-way exchange of slaves, rum, and sugar. Northern shippers purchased slaves using rum
Rum
Rum is a distilled alcoholic beverage made from sugarcane by-products such as molasses, or directly from sugarcane juice, by a process of fermentation and distillation. The distillate, a clear liquid, is then usually aged in oak barrels...
, made in New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
from cane sugar, which was in turn grown in the Caribbean. This slave trade was generally able to fulfill labor needs in the South for the cultivation of tobacco after the decline of indentured servants. Most of the slaves brought to America refused to eat, wanting to die rather than to work for nothing.
At approximately the point when tobacco labor needs began to increase, the mortality of the colonies decreased. By the late 17th century and early 18th century, slaves became economically viable sources of labor for the growing tobacco culture. Also, further South than the Mid-Atlantic, Southern settlers grew wealthy by raising and selling rice, indigo
Indigo
Indigo is a color named after the purple dye derived from the plant Indigofera tinctoria and related species. The color is placed on the electromagnetic spectrum between about 420 and 450 nm in wavelength, placing it between blue and violet...
, and cotton. The plantations of South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
often were modeled on Caribbean plantations, yet never attained similar size.
Growth of the Southern colonies
For details on each specific colony, see Province of GeorgiaProvince of Georgia
The Province of Georgia was one of the Southern colonies in British America. It was the last of the thirteen original colonies established by Great Britain in what later became the United States...
, Province of Maryland
Province of Maryland
The Province of Maryland was an English and later British colony in North America that existed from 1632 until 1776, when it joined the other twelve of the Thirteen Colonies in rebellion against Great Britain and became the U.S...
, Province of North Carolina
Province of North Carolina
The Province of North Carolina was originally part of the Province of Carolina in British America, which was chartered by eight Lords Proprietor. The province later became the U.S. states of North Carolina and Tennessee....
, Province of South Carolina
Province of South Carolina
The South Carolina Colony, or Province of South Carolina, was originally part of the Province of Carolina, which was chartered in 1663. The colony later became the U.S. state of South Carolina....
, and Virginia Colony.
By the end of the 17th century, the number of colonists was growing. The large population centers were still in the northeastern and middle colonies, leaving the southern colonies of Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
, Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
, North
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
and South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
a rural frontier land. The economies of these colonies were tied to agriculture. During this time the great plantation
Plantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...
s were formed by wealthy colonists who saw great opportunity in the new country. Tobacco
Tobacco
Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...
and cotton
Cotton
Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....
were the main cash crops of the areas and were readily accepted by English buyers. Rice
Rice
Rice is the seed of the monocot plants Oryza sativa or Oryza glaberrima . As a cereal grain, it is the most important staple food for a large part of the world's human population, especially in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and the West Indies...
and indigo
Indigo dye
Indigo dye is an organic compound with a distinctive blue color . Historically, indigo was a natural dye extracted from plants, and this process was important economically because blue dyes were once rare. Nearly all indigo dye produced today — several thousand tons each year — is synthetic...
were also grown in the area and exported to Europe. The plantation owners built a vast aristocratic life and accumulated a great deal of wealth from their land. They supported slavery as a means of working their land and tended to keep close ties with the European cultural circles.
On the other side of the agricultural coin were the small yeoman farmers. They did not have the capability or wealth to operate large plantations. Instead, they worked small tracts of land and developed a political activism in response to the growing oligarchy
Oligarchy
Oligarchy is a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with an elite class distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, commercial, and/or military legitimacy...
of the plantation owners. Many politicians from this era were yeoman farmers speaking out to protect their rights as free men.
Charleston
Charleston, South Carolina
Charleston is the second largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina. It was made the county seat of Charleston County in 1901 when Charleston County was founded. The city's original name was Charles Towne in 1670, and it moved to its present location from a location on the west bank of the...
became a booming trade town for the southern colonies. The abundance of pine
Pine
Pines are trees in the genus Pinus ,in the family Pinaceae. They make up the monotypic subfamily Pinoideae. There are about 115 species of pine, although different authorities accept between 105 and 125 species.-Etymology:...
trees in the area provided raw materials for shipyards to develop and the harbor provided a safe port for English ships bringing in imported goods. The colonists exported tobacco, cotton and textiles and imported tea, sugar and slaves. The fact that these colonies maintained an independent trade relation with England and the rest of Europe became a major factor later on as tension mounted leading up to the American Revolutionary War
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...
.
After the late 17th century, the economies of the North and the South began to diverge, especially in coastal areas. The Southern emphasis on export production contrasted with the Northern emphasis on food production.
By the mid-18th century, the colonies of Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia had been established. In the upper colonies, that is, Maryland, Virginia, and portions of North Carolina, the tobacco culture prevailed. However, in the lower colonies of South Carolina and Georgia, cultivation focused more on cotton and rice.
Antebellum Era (1781–1860)
After the upheaval of the American Revolution effectively ended in 1781 at the Battle of Yorktown, the South became a major political force in the development of the United States. With the ratification of the Articles of ConfederationArticles of Confederation
The Articles of Confederation, formally the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, was an agreement among the 13 founding states that legally established the United States of America as a confederation of sovereign states and served as its first constitution...
, the South found political stability, with little federal interference in state affairs. However, with this stability came weakness by design, and the inability of the Confederation to maintain economic viability eventually forced the creation of the United States Constitution
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...
in Philadelphia in 1787. Importantly, Southerners of 1861 often believed their secessionist efforts and the Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
paralleled the American Revolution, as a military and ideological "replay" of the latter.
Southern leaders were able to protect their sectional interests during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, preventing the insertion of any explicit anti-slavery position in the Constitution. Moreover, they were able to force the inclusion of the "fugitive slave clause" and the "Three-Fifths Compromise
Three-fifths compromise
The Three-Fifths Compromise was a compromise between Southern and Northern states reached during the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 in which three-fifths of the enumerated population of slaves would be counted for representation purposes regarding both the distribution of taxes and the...
". Nevertheless, Congress retained the power to regulate the slave trade, and 20 years after the ratification of the Constitution, Congress prohibited the importation of slaves effective January 1, 1808. While North and South were able to find common ground in order to gain the benefits of a strong Union, the unity achieved in the Constitution masked deeply rooted differences in economic and political interests. After the convention, two emerging understandings of American republicanism
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...
came to loggerheads.
For the North, a Puritanical republicanism predominated, with leaders such as Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, soldier, economist, political philosopher, one of America's first constitutional lawyers and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury...
and John Adams
John Adams
John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...
. In the South, Agrarian republicanism formed the basis of political culture. While both attempted to preserve their "way of life" in order to preserve the Union, their methods of this preservation were quite different. While Northern republicans aimed to make better people and thus ensure the survival of democracy, Southerners focused on making better conditions. Led by Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
and James Madison
James Madison
James Madison, Jr. was an American statesman and political theorist. He was the fourth President of the United States and is hailed as the “Father of the Constitution” for being the primary author of the United States Constitution and at first an opponent of, and then a key author of the United...
, the Agrarian republican position is characterized by the epitaph
Epitaph
An epitaph is a short text honoring a deceased person, strictly speaking that is inscribed on their tombstone or plaque, but also used figuratively. Some are specified by the dead person beforehand, others chosen by those responsible for the burial...
on the grave of Jefferson. While including his "condition bettering" roles in the foundation of the University of Virginia
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...
, and the writing of the Declaration of Independence
Declaration of independence
A declaration of independence is an assertion of the independence of an aspiring state or states. Such places are usually declared from part or all of the territory of another nation or failed nation, or are breakaway territories from within the larger state...
and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom
Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom
The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was drafted in 1777 by Thomas Jefferson in the city of Fredericksburg, Virginia. In 1786, the Assembly enacted the statute into the state's law...
, absent was his role in the federal government as president of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
. Southern development of political thought thus focused on the ideal of the yeoman
Yeoman
Yeoman refers chiefly to a free man owning his own farm, especially from the Elizabethan era to the 17th century. Work requiring a great deal of effort or labor, such as would be done by a yeoman farmer, came to be described as "yeoman's work"...
farmer; i.e., those who are tied to the land also have a vested interest in the stability and survival of the government.
Antebellum slavery
In the decades immediately following the ratification of the Constitution, slavery in the South continued without substantial opposition from the North. Slavery was legal and practiced in most States, north and South. Though some in the North viewed slavery as a moralMorality
Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...
issue, most were indifferent, and some even believed that the abolition of slavery would be detrimental to their economic interests. As for Southerners, before the cotton boom, large plantations with dozens or hundreds of slaves were rare, and usually found in the Deep South
Deep South
The Deep South is a descriptive category of the cultural and geographic subregions in the American South. Historically, it is differentiated from the "Upper South" as being the states which were most dependent on plantation type agriculture during the pre-Civil War period...
. The vast majority of Southerners never owned slaves. Most were independent yeoman farmers much like their counterparts in the North. Nevertheless, the slave system represented the basis of the Southern social and economic system, and thus even non-slaveowners often violently opposed any suggestions for terminating that system, whether through abolition
Abolitionism
Abolitionism is a movement to end slavery.In western Europe and the Americas abolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and set slaves free. At the behest of Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas who was shocked at the treatment of natives in the New World, Spain enacted the first...
or gradual emancipation
Emancipation
Emancipation means the act of setting an individual or social group free or making equal to citizens in a political society.Emancipation may also refer to:* Emancipation , a champion Australian thoroughbred racehorse foaled in 1979...
.
| Union | CSA | |
|---|---|---|
| Total population | 22,000,000 (71%) | 9,000,000 (29%) |
| Free population | 22,000,000 | 5,500,000 |
| 1860 Border state slaves | 432,586 | NA |
| 1860 Southern slaves | NA | 3,500,000 |
| Soldiers | 2,200,000 (67%) | 1,064,000 (33%) |
| Railroad miles | 21,788 (71%) | 8,838 (29%) |
| Manufactured items | 90% | 10% |
| Firearm production | 97% | 3% |
| Bales of cotton in 1860 | Negligible | 4,500,000 |
| Bales of cotton in 1864 | Negligible | 300,000 |
| Pre-war U.S. exports | 30% | 70% |
This chart shows how dependent the south was on foreign trade, and why it was so violently opposed to abolition, since slaves provided the labor needed to support the cotton economy.
Nullification crisis, political representation, and rising sectionalism
See also, NullificationNullification (U.S. Constitution)
Nullification is a legal theory that a State has the right to nullify, or invalidate, any federal law which that state has deemed unconstitutional...
and Nullification crisis
Nullification Crisis
The Nullification Crisis was a sectional crisis during the presidency of Andrew Jackson created by South Carolina's 1832 Ordinance of Nullification. This ordinance declared by the power of the State that the federal Tariff of 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and therefore null and void within...
Although slavery had yet to become a major issue, states' rights
States' rights
States' rights in U.S. politics refers to political powers reserved for the U.S. state governments rather than the federal government. It is often considered a loaded term because of its use in opposition to federally mandated racial desegregation...
issues surfaced periodically in the early antebellum period, especially in the South. The election of Federalist
Federalist Party (United States)
The Federalist Party was the first American political party, from the early 1790s to 1816, the era of the First Party System, with remnants lasting into the 1820s. The Federalists controlled the federal government until 1801...
John Adams
John Adams
John Adams was an American lawyer, statesman, diplomat and political theorist. A leading champion of independence in 1776, he was the second President of the United States...
in the 1796 presidential election came in tandem with escalating tensions with France. In 1798, the XYZ Affair
XYZ Affair
The XYZ Affair was a 1798 diplomatic episode during the administration of John Adams that Americans interpreted as an insult from France. It led to an undeclared naval war called the Quasi-War, which raged at sea from 1798 to 1800...
brought these tensions to the fore, and Adams became concerned about French power in America, fearing internal sabotage
Sabotage
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. In a workplace setting, sabotage is the conscious withdrawal of efficiency generally directed at causing some change in workplace conditions. One who engages in sabotage is...
and malcontent brought on by French agents. In response to these developments and to repeated attacks on Adams and the Federalists by Democratic-Republican publishers, Congress enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts
Alien and Sedition Acts
The Alien and Sedition Acts were four bills passed in 1798 by the Federalists in the 5th United States Congress in the aftermath of the French Revolution's reign of terror and during an undeclared naval war with France, later known as the Quasi-War. They were signed into law by President John Adams...
. Enforcement of the acts resulted in the jailing of "seditious" Democratic-Republican editors throughout the North and South, and prompted the adoption of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions
Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions
The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions were political statements drafted in 1798 and 1799, in which the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures took the position that the federal Alien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional...
of 1798 (authored by Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
and James Madison
James Madison
James Madison, Jr. was an American statesman and political theorist. He was the fourth President of the United States and is hailed as the “Father of the Constitution” for being the primary author of the United States Constitution and at first an opponent of, and then a key author of the United...
), by the legislatures of those states.
Thirty years later, during the "Nullification" crisis, the "Principles of '98" embodied in these resolutions were cited by leaders in South Carolina as a justification for state legislatures' asserting the power to nullify, or prevent the local application of, acts of the federal Congress that they deemed unconstitutional. The Nullification crisis
Nullification Crisis
The Nullification Crisis was a sectional crisis during the presidency of Andrew Jackson created by South Carolina's 1832 Ordinance of Nullification. This ordinance declared by the power of the State that the federal Tariff of 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and therefore null and void within...
arose as a result of the Tariff of 1828
Tariff of 1828
The Tariff of 1828 was a protective tariff passed by the Congress of the United States on May 19, 1828, designed to protect industry in the northern United States...
, a set of high taxes on imports of manufactures, enacted by Congress as a protectionist measure to foster the development of domestic industry, primarily in the North. In 1832, the legislature of South Carolina nullified the entire "Tariff of Abominations," as the Tariff of 1828 was known in the South, prompting a stand-off between the state and federal government. Although the crisis was resolved through a combination of the actions of President Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States . Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend , and the British at the Battle of New Orleans...
, Congressional reduction of the tariff, and the Force Bill
Force Bill
The United States Force Bill, formally titled "An Act further to provide for the collection of duties on imports", 4 Stat. 632 , enacted by the 22nd U.S. Congress, consists of eight sections expanding Presidential power...
, it had lasting importance for the later development of secession
Secession
Secession is the act of withdrawing from an organization, union, or especially a political entity. Threats of secession also can be a strategy for achieving more limited goals.-Secession theory:...
ist thought.
Sectional parity and issue of slavery in new territories
Another issue feeding sectionalism was slavery, and especially the issue of whether to permit slavery in western territories seeking admission to the Union as states. In the early 19th century, as the cotton boom took hold, slavery became more economically viable on a large scale, and more Northerners began to perceive it as an economic threat, even if they remained indifferent to its moral dimension. While relatively few Northerners favored outright abolition, many more opposed the expansion of slavery to new territories, as in their view the availability of slaves lowered wages for free labor.At the same time, Southerners increasingly perceived the economic and population growth of the North as threatening to their interests. For several decades after the Union was formed, as new states were admitted, North and South were able to finesse their sectional differences and maintain political balance by agreeing to admit "slave" and "free" states in equal numbers. By means of this compromise approach, the balance of power in the Senate could be extended indefinitely. The House of Representatives, however, was a different matter. As the North industrialized and its population grew, aided by a major influx of European immigrants, the Northern majority in the House of Representatives also grew, making Southern political leaders increasingly uncomfortable. Southerners became concerned that they would soon find themselves at the mercy of a federal government in which they no longer had sufficient representation to protect their interests. By the late 1840s, Senator Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Finis Davis , also known as Jeff Davis, was an American statesman and leader of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, serving as President for its entire history. He was born in Kentucky to Samuel and Jane Davis...
from Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
stated that the new Northern majority in the Congress would make the government of the United States "an engine of Northern aggrandizement" and that Northern leaders had an agenda to "promote the industry of the United States at the expense of the people of the South."
With the Mexican War
Mexican–American War
The Mexican–American War, also known as the First American Intervention, the Mexican War, or the U.S.–Mexican War, was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848 in the wake of the 1845 U.S...
, which alarmed many Northerners by adding new territory on the Southern side of the free-slave boundary, the slavery-in-the-territories issue heated up dramatically. After a four-year sectional conflict the Compromise of 1850
Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five bills, passed in September 1850, which defused a four-year confrontation between the slave states of the South and the free states of the North regarding the status of territories acquired during the Mexican-American War...
narrowly averted civil war with a complex deal in which California was admitted as a free state including Southern California
Southern California
Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...
thus preventing a separate slave territory there, while slavery was allowed in the New Mexico and Utah territories and a stronger Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed requiring all citizens to assist in recapturing runaway slaves wherever found. Four years later, the peace bought with successive compromises finally came to an end. In the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Congress left the issue of slavery to a vote in each territory, thereby provoking a breakdown of law and order as rival groups of pro- and anti-slavery immigrants competed to populate the newly settled region.
Election of 1860, secession, and Lincoln's response
For many Southerners, the last straws were the raid on Harper's Ferry in 1859 by fanatical abolitionist John Brown, immediately followed by a Northern Republican presidential victory in the election of 1860. Republican Abraham LincolnAbraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
was elected president with only 40% of the popular vote and with hardly any popular support in the South. Lincoln did not win the electoral votes of any Southern state, and only 2 of the 996 counties of the South voted for him. Reference:U.S. presidential election, 1860
Members of the South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
legislature had previously sworn to secede from the Union if Lincoln was elected, and the state declared its secession on December 20, 1860. In January and February, six other cotton states of the Deep South followed suit: Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. The other eight slave states postponed a decision, but the seven formed a new government in Montgomery, Alabama in February: the Confederate States of America
Confederate States of America
The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...
. Throughout the South, Confederates seized federal arsenals and forts, without resistance, and forced the surrender of all U.S. forces in Texas. The sitting President, James Buchanan
James Buchanan
James Buchanan, Jr. was the 15th President of the United States . He is the only president from Pennsylvania, the only president who remained a lifelong bachelor and the last to be born in the 18th century....
, believed he had no constitutional power to act, and in the four months between Lincoln's election and his inauguration, the South strengthened its military position.
In Washington, proposals for compromise and reunion went nowhere, as the Confederates demanded complete, total, permanent independence. When Lincoln dispatched a supply ship to federal-held Fort Sumter
Fort Sumter
Fort Sumter is a Third System masonry coastal fortification located in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. The fort is best known as the site upon which the shots initiating the American Civil War were fired, at the Battle of Fort Sumter.- Construction :...
, in South Carolina, the Confederate government ordered an attack on the fort, which surrendered on April 13. President Lincoln called upon the states to supply 75,000 troops to serve for ninety days to recover federal property, and, forced to choose sides, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina promptly voted to secede. Kentucky declared its neutrality.
Civil War (1860-1865)
Aware that they could not conquer the much larger and more powerful Union, the Confederacy adopted a military strategy that would hold its territory together, gain worldwide recognition, and inflict so much punishment on invaders that the Northerners would tire of an expensive war and negotiate a peace treaty that would recognize the independence of the CSA. After secession, no compromise was possible, because the Confederacy insisted on its independence. As late as February 1865, Lincoln offered peaceful and honorable reunion, with cash to purchase all the slaves; his offer was rejected by rebel leaders who dreamed of independence even as the nation was collapsing, and its armies fought in the last trenches.Both sides wanted the border states, but the Union military forces took control of all of them in 1861-1862. Union victories in western Virginia allowed a Unionist government based in Wheeling
Restored government of Virginia
The Restored Government of Virginia, or the Reorganized Government of Virginia, was the Unionist government of Virginia during the American Civil War. From 1861 until mid-1863 it met in Wheeling, and from 26 August 1863 until June 1865 it met in Alexandria...
to take control of western Virginia and, with Washington's approval, create the new state of West Virginia. The Confederacy did recruit troops in the border states, but the enormous advantage of controlling them went to the Union.
The Union naval blockade
Union blockade
The Union Blockade, or the Blockade of the South, took place between 1861 and 1865, during the American Civil War, when the Union Navy maintained a strenuous effort on the Atlantic and Gulf Coast of the Confederate States of America designed to prevent the passage of trade goods, supplies, and arms...
starting in May 1861, reducing exports by 95%; only small, fast blockade runners—mostly owned and operated by British interests—could get through. The South's vast cotton crops became nearly worthless.
In 1861 the rebels assumed that "King Cotton
King Cotton
King Cotton was a slogan used by southerners to support secession from the United States by arguing cotton exports would make an independent Confederacy economically prosperous, and—more important—would force Great Britain and France to support the Confederacy because their industrial economy...
" was so powerful that the threat of losing their supplies would induce Britain and France to enter the war as allies, and thereby frustrate Union efforts. Confederate leaders were ignorant of European conditions; Britain depended on the Union for its food supply, and would not benefit from an extremely expensive major war with the U.S. The Confederacy moved its capital from a defensible location in remote Montgomery, Alabama, to the more cosmopolitan city of Richmond, Virginia, only 100 miles from Washington. Richmond had the heritage and facilities to match those of Washington, but its proximity to the Union forced the CSA to spend most of its war-making capability to defend Richmond.
Leadership
The strength of the Confederacy included an unusually strong officer corps—about a third of the officers of the U.S. Army had resigned and joined. But the political leadership was not very effective. The south... they decided not to allow political faith, which had the result of weakening grassroots mobilization of supplies and support for the national government. One interpretation is that the Confederacy "died of states rights," as governors of Texas, Georgia and North Carolina refused Richmond's request for troopsHistorians continue to debate the effectiveness of President Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Finis Davis , also known as Jeff Davis, was an American statesman and leader of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, serving as President for its entire history. He was born in Kentucky to Samuel and Jane Davis...
, with a consensus holding that he was much less effective than Abraham Lincoln. As a former Army officer, senator, and Secretary of War, he possessed the stature and experience to be president, but certain character defects undercut his performance. He played favorites, was imperious, frosty, and quarrelsome. By dispensing with parties, he lost the chance to build a grass roots network that would provide critically needed support in dark hours. Instead, he took the brunt of the blame for all difficulties and disasters. Davis was animated by a profound vision of a powerful, opulent new nation, the Confederate States of America, premised on the right of its white citizens to self government. However, in dramatic contrast to Lincoln, he was never able to articulate that vision or provide a coherent strategy to fight the war. He neglected the civilian needs of the Confederacy while spending too much time meddling in military details. Davis's meddling in military strategy proved counterproductive. His explicit orders that Vicksburg be held no matter what led sabotaged the only feasible defense and led directly to the fall of the city in 1863.
Abolition of slavery
By 1862 most northern leaders realized that the mainstay of Southern secession, slavery, had to be attacked head-on. In the border states, systematic efforts to end slavery were underway by 1862, and all had begun the abolition of slavery by the end of the war, except Kentucky and Delaware. President Abraham LincolnAbraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
issued the Emancipation Proclamation
Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation is an executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War using his war powers. It proclaimed the freedom of 3.1 million of the nation's 4 million slaves, and immediately freed 50,000 of them, with nearly...
on January 1, 1863, and it immediately began taking effect. By the end of war, the Proclamation had freed practically all the slaves in the Confederacy. The Thirteenth Amendment
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution officially abolished and continues to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, passed by the House on January 31, 1865, and adopted on December 6, 1865. On...
, ratified in December 1865, made slavery illegal, leaving millions of ex-slaves now in the status of Freedmen. Nearly all slaves were emancipated with no compensation to their masters, as the proposals by Lincoln to purchase slaves had all been rejected.
Railroads
The Union had a 3-1 superiority in railroad mileage and (even more important) an overwhelming advantage in engineers and mechanics in the rolling mills, machine shops, factories, roundhouses and repair yards that produced and maintained rails, bridging equipage, locomotives, rolling stock, signaling gear, and telegraph equipment. In peacetime the South imported all its railroad gear from the North; the Union blockadeUnion blockade
The Union Blockade, or the Blockade of the South, took place between 1861 and 1865, during the American Civil War, when the Union Navy maintained a strenuous effort on the Atlantic and Gulf Coast of the Confederate States of America designed to prevent the passage of trade goods, supplies, and arms...
completely cut off such imports. The lines in the South were mostly designed for short hauls, as from cotton areas to river or ocean ports; they were not designed for trips of more than 100 miles or so, and such trips involved numerous changes of trains and layovers. The South's 8,500 miles of track comprised enough of a railroad system to handle essential military traffic along some internal lines, assuming it could be defended and maintained. As the system deteriorated because of worn out equipment, accidents and sabotage, the South was unable to construct or even repair new locomotives, cars, signals or track. Little new equipment ever arrived, although rails in remote areas such as Florida were removed and put to more efficient use in the war zones. Realizing their enemy's dilemma, Union cavalry raids routinely destroyed locomotives, cars, rails, roundhouses, trestles, bridges, and telegraph wires. By the end of the war, the southern railroad system was totally ruined—used up, worn out, or burned out. Meanwhile the Union army rebuilt rail lines to supply its forces. A Union railroad through hostile territory, as from Nashville to Atlanta in 1864, was an essential but fragile lifeline—it took a whole army to guard it, because each foot of track had to be secure. Large numbers of Union soldiers throughout the war were assigned to guard duty and, while always ready for action, seldom saw any fighting.
Sherman's March
By 1864 the top Union generals Ulysses S. GrantUlysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States as well as military commander during the Civil War and post-war Reconstruction periods. Under Grant's command, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and ended the Confederate States of America...
and William T. Sherman realized the weakest point of the Confederate armies was the decrepitude of the southern infrastructure, so they escalated efforts to wear it down. Cavalry raids were the favorite device, with instructions to ruin railroads and bridges. Sherman's insight was deeper. He focused on the trust the rebels had in their Confederacy as a living nation, and he set out to destroy that trust; he predicted his raid would "demonstrate the vulnerability of the South, and make its inhabitants feel that war and individual ruin are synonymous terms.". Sherman's "March To the Sea," from Atlanta to Savannah in fall, 1864, burned and broke and ruined every part of the industrial, commercial, transportation and agricultural infrastructure it touched, but the actual damage was confined to a swath of territory totaling about 15% of Georgia. Sherman struck at Georgia in October, just after the harvest, when the food supplies for the next year had been gathered and were exposed to destruction. In early 1865 Sherman's army moved north through the Carolinas in a campaign even more devastating than the March Through Georgia. More telling than the twisted rails, smoldering main streets, dead cattle, burning barns and ransacked houses was the bitter realization among civilians and soldiers throughout the remaining Confederacy that if they persisted, sooner or later their homes and communities would receive the same treatment.
Out-gunned, out-manned, and out-financed, defeat loomed after four years of fighting. When Lee surrendered to Grant in April 1865, the Confederacy fell; there was no insurgency, no treason trials, and only one war crimes trial.
Reconstruction (1863-1877)
Reconstruction began as soon as the Union Army took control of a state; the start and ending times varied by state, beginning in 1863 and ending in 1877.Material ruin and human losses
Reconstruction played out against a backdrop of a once prosperous economy that lay in ruins. According to Hesseltine (1936), "Throughout the South, fences were down, weeds had overrun the fields, windows were broken, live stock had disappeared. The assessed valuation of property declined from 30 to 60 percent in the decade after 1860. In Mobile, business was stagnant; Chattanooga and Nashville were ruined; and Atlanta's industrial sections were in ashes In Charleston, a journalist in September 1865 discovered "a city of ruins, of desolation, of vacant houses, of widowed women, of rotten wharves, of deserted warehouses, of weed-wild gardens, of miles of grass-grown streets, of acres of pitiful and voiceful barrenness."The Confederate army lost 94,000 killed in battle and another 164,000 who died of disease. Official counts of the wounded are far too low, at 194,000. The number of civilian deaths is unknown. Most of the war was fought in Virginia and Tennessee, but every Southern state was affected as well as Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky Missouri, and Indian Territory; Pennsylvania was the only northerner state to be the scene of major action, during the Gettysburg campaign. In the Confederacy there was little military action in Texas and Florida. Of 645 counties in 9 Confederate states (excluding Texas and Florida), there was Union military action in 56% of them, containing 63% of the whites and 64% of the slaves in 1860; however by the time the action took place some people had fled to safer areas, so the exact population exposed to war is unknown.
The Confederacy in 1861 had 297 towns and cities with 835,000 people; of these 162 with 681,000 people were at one point occupied by Union forces. Eleven were destroyed or severely damaged by war action, including Atlanta (with an 1860 population of 9,600), Charleston, Columbia, and Richmond (with prewar populations of 40,500, 8,100, and 37,900, respectively); the eleven contained 115,900 people in the 1860 census, or 14% of the urban South. Historians have not estimated their population when they were invaded. The number of people who lived in the destroyed towns represented just over 1% of the Confederacy's population. In addition, 45 court houses were burned (out of 830). The South's agriculture was not highly mechanized. The value of farm implements and machinery in the 1860 Census was $81 million; by 1870, there was 40% less, of $48 million worth. Many old tools had broken through heavy use and could not be replaced; even repairs were difficult.
The economic calamity suffered by the South during the war affected every family. Except for land, most assets and investments had vanished with slavery, but debts were left behind. Worst of all were the human deaths and amputations. Most farms were intact but most had lost their horses, mules and cattle; fences and barns were in disrepair. Prices for cotton had plunged. The rebuilding would take years and require outside investment because the devastation was so thorough. One historian has summarized the collapse of the transportation infrastructure needed for economic recovery:
- One of the greatest calamities which confronted Southerners was the havoc wrought on the transportation system. Roads were impassable or nonexistent, and bridges were destroyed or washed away. The important river traffic was at a standstill: levees were broken, channels were blocked, the few steamboats which had not been captured or destroyed were in a state of disrepair, wharves had decayed or were missing, and trained personnel were dead or dispersed. Horses, mules, oxen, carriages, wagons, and carts had nearly all fallen prey at one time or another to the contending armies. The railroads were paralyzed, with most of the companies bankrupt. These lines had been the special target of the enemy. On one stretch of 114 miles in Alabama, every bridge and trestle was destroyed, cross-ties rotten, buildings burned, water-tanks gone, ditches filled up, and tracks grown up in weeds and bushes. . . . Communication centers like Columbia and Atlanta were in ruins; shops and foundries were wrecked or in disrepair. Even those areas bypassed by battle had been pirated for equipment needed on the battlefront, and the wear and tear of wartime usage without adequate repairs or replacements reduced all to a state of disintegration.
Railroad mileage was of course located mostly in rural areas. The war followed the rails, and over two-thirds of the South's rails, bridges, rail yards, repair shops and rolling stock were in areas reached by Union armies, which systematically destroyed what it could. The South had 9400 miles of track and 6500 miles was in areas reached by the Union armies. About 4400 miles were in areas where Sherman and other Union generals adopted a policy of systematic destruction of the rail system. Even in untouched areas, the lack of maintenance and repair, the absence of new equipment, the heavy over-use, and the deliberate movement of equipment by the Confederates from remote areas to the war zone guaranteed the system would be virtually ruined at war's end.
Political Reconstruction, 1863-1877
Reconstruction was the process by which the states returned to full status. It took place in four stages, which varied by state. Tennessee and the border states were not affected. First came the governments appointed by President Andrew JohnsonAndrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson was the 17th President of the United States . As Vice-President of the United States in 1865, he succeeded Abraham Lincoln following the latter's assassination. Johnson then presided over the initial and contentious Reconstruction era of the United States following the American...
that lasted 1865-66. The Freedman's Bureau was active, helping refugees, setting up employment contracts for Freedmen, and setting up courts and schools for the Freedmen. Second came rule by the U.S. Army, which held elections that included all Freedmen but excluded over 10,000 Confederate leaders. Third was "Radical Reconstruction" or "Black Reconstruction" in which a Republican coalition governed the state, comprising a coalition of Freedmen, Scalawag
Scalawag
In United States history, scalawag was a derogatory nickname for southern whites who supported Reconstruction following the Civil War.-History:...
s (native whites) and Carpetbagger
Carpetbagger
Carpetbaggers was a pejorative term Southerners gave to Northerners who moved to the South during the Reconstruction era, between 1865 and 1877....
s (migrants from the North). Violent resistance by the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
and related groups was suppressed by President Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States as well as military commander during the Civil War and post-war Reconstruction periods. Under Grant's command, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and ended the Confederate States of America...
and the vigorous use of federal courts and soldiers in 1868-70. The Reconstruction governments spent large sums on railroad subsidies and schools, but quadrupled taxes and set off a tax revolt among conservatives. Stage four was reached by 1876 as the conservative coalition, called Redeemers
Redeemers
In United States history, "Redeemers" and "Redemption" were terms used by white Southerners to describe a political coalition in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction era which followed the American Civil War...
, had won political control of all the states except South Carolina, Florida and Louisiana. The disputed presidential election of 1876 hinged on those three violently contested states. The outcome was the Compromise of 1877
Compromise of 1877
The Compromise of 1877, also known as the Corrupt Bargain, refers to a purported informal, unwritten deal that settled the disputed 1876 U.S. Presidential election and ended Congressional Reconstruction. Through it, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was awarded the White House over Democrat Samuel J...
whereby the Republican Rutherford Hayes became president and all federal troops were withdrawn from the South, leading to the immediate collapse of the last Republican state governments.
Railroads
The building of a new, modern rail system was widely seen as essential to the economy recovery of the South, and modernizers invested in a "Gospel of Prosperity." Northern money financed the rebuilding and dramatic expansion of railroads throughout the South; they were modernized in terms of rail gaugeRail gauge
Track gauge or rail gauge is the distance between the inner sides of the heads of the two load bearing rails that make up a single railway line. Sixty percent of the world's railways use a standard gauge of . Wider gauges are called broad gauge; smaller gauges, narrow gauge. Break-of-gauge refers...
, equipment and standards of service. the Southern network expanded from 11,000 miles (17,700 km) in 1870 to 29,000 miles (46,700 km) in 1890. Railroads helped create a mechanically skilled group of craftsmen and broke the isolation of much of the region. Passengers were few, however, and apart from hauling the cotton crop when it was harvested, there was little freight traffic. The lines were owned and directed overwhelmingly by Northerners, who often had to pay heavy bribes to corrupt politicians for needed legislation.
The Panic of 1873
Panic of 1873
The Panic of 1873 triggered a severe international economic depression in both Europe and the United States that lasted until 1879, and even longer in some countries. The depression was known as the Great Depression until the 1930s, but is now known as the Long Depression...
ended the expansion everywhere in the United States, leaving many Southern lines bankrupt or barely able to pay the interest on their bonds.
Backlash to Reconstruction
Reconstruction was a harsh time for many white Southerners who found themselves without many of the basic rights of citizenship (such as the ability to vote). Reconstruction was also a time when many African Americans began to secure these same rights. With the passage of the 13th AmendmentThirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution officially abolished and continues to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, passed by the House on January 31, 1865, and adopted on December 6, 1865. On...
to the Constitution
Constitution
A constitution is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed. These rules together make up, i.e. constitute, what the entity is...
(which outlawed slavery), the 14th Amendment
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v...
(which granted full U.S. citizenship to African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
s) and the 15th Amendment
Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits each government in the United States from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude"...
(which extended the right to vote to black males), African Americans in the South began to enjoy more rights than they had ever had in the past.
Race: From Jim Crow to the Civil Rights Movement
After the RedeemersRedeemers
In United States history, "Redeemers" and "Redemption" were terms used by white Southerners to describe a political coalition in the Southern United States during the Reconstruction era which followed the American Civil War...
took control in the mid 1870s, Jim Crow laws were created to legally enforce racial segregation
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
. The most extreme white leader was Senator Ben Tillman of South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
, who proudly proclaimed in 1900, "We have done our level best [to prevent blacks from voting]...we have scratched our heads to find out how we could eliminate the last one of them. We stuffed ballot boxes. We shot them. We are not ashamed of it." (Logan, p. 91)
With no voting rights and no voice in government, Blacks in the South were subjected to a system of segregation and discrimination. Blacks and whites attended separate schools. Blacks could not serve on juries, which meant that they had little if any legal recourse. In Black Boy
Black Boy
Black Boy is an autobiography by Richard Wright. The author explores his childhood and race relations in the South. Wright eventually moves to Chicago, where he establishes his writing career and becomes involved with the Communist Party....
, an autobiographical account of life during this time, Richard Wright
Richard Wright (author)
Richard Nathaniel Wright was an African-American author of sometimes controversial novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially those involving the plight of African-Americans during the late 19th to mid 20th centuries...
writes about being struck with a bottle and knocked from a moving truck for failing to call a white man "sir" (Wright, Chapter Nine). Between 1889 and 1922, the NAACP calculates that lynchings reached their worst level in history, with almost 3,500 people, three-fourths of them black men, murdered.http://uncpress.unc.edu/chapters/estes_i.html
In response to this treatment, the South witnessed two major events in the lives of 20th century African Americans: the Great Migration
Great Migration (African American)
The Great Migration was the movement of 6 million blacks out of the Southern United States to the Northeast, Midwest, and West from 1910 to 1970. Some historians differentiate between a Great Migration , numbering about 1.6 million migrants, and a Second Great Migration , in which 5 million or more...
and the American Civil Rights Movement.
The Great Migration began during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, hitting its high point during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. During this migration, Black people left the racism and lack of opportunities in the South and settled in northern cities like Chicago, where they found work in factories and other sectors of the economy. (Katzman, 1996) This migration produced a new sense of independence in the Black community and contributed to the vibrant Black urban culture seen during the Harlem Renaissance
Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke...
.
The migration also empowered the growing American Civil Rights Movement. While the Civil Rights movement existed in all parts of the United States, its focus was against the Jim Crow laws in the South. Most of the major events in the movement occurred in the South, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign that started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, USA, intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its public transit system. Many important figures in the civil rights movement were involved in the boycott,...
, the Mississippi Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer was a campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African American voters as possible in Mississippi which had historically excluded most blacks from voting...
, the March on Selma, Alabama
Selma, Alabama
Selma is a city in and the county seat of Dallas County, Alabama, United States, located on the banks of the Alabama River. The population was 20,512 at the 2000 census....
, and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
. In addition, some of the most important writings to come out of the movement were written in the South, such as King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail
Letter from Birmingham Jail
The Letter from Birmingham Jail or Letter from Birmingham City Jail, also known as The Negro Is Your Brother, is an open letter written on April 16, 1963, by Martin Luther King, Jr., an American civil rights leader...
".
As a result of the Civil Rights Laws of 1964 and 1965, all Jim Crow laws across the South were dropped. This change in the South's racial climate combined with the new industrialization in the region to help usher in what is called the New South
New South
New South, New South Democracy or New South Creed is a phrase that has been used intermittently since the American Civil War to describe the American South, after 1877. The term "New South" is used in contrast to the Old South of the plantation system of the antebellum period.The term has been used...
.
Rural South
The South remained heavily rural until World War II. There were only a few scattered cities; small courthouse towns serviced the farm population, in county politics revolve around the politicians and lawyers based at the courthouse. Mill towns, focus on textile production or cigarette manufacture, began opening in the Piedmont region especially in the Carolinas. Racial segregation and outward signs of inequality were everywhere, and rarely were challenged. Blacks who violated the color line were liable to expulsion or lynching. Cotton became even more important than before, even though prices were much lower. White southerners showed a reluctance to move north, or to move to cities, so the number of small farms proliferated, and they became smaller and smaller as the population grew. Many of the white farmers, and most of the blacks, were tenant farmers who owned their work animals and tools, and rented their land. Others were day laborers or very poor sharecroppers, who worked under the supervision of the landowner. There was little cash in circulation, since most farmers operated on credit accounts from local merchants, and paid off their debts at harvest time in the fall. Although there were small country churches everywhere, there were only a few dilapidated schools; high school was out of reach for the great majority of rural Southern youth. Conditions were marginally better in newer areas, especially in Texas and central Florida, with the deepest poverty in South Carolina, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Hook worm and other diseases sat with physical health of a large fraction of Southerners.Agriculture's Share of the Labor Force by Region, 1890
| Northeast | 15% |
| Middle Atlantic | 17% |
| Midwest | 43% |
| South Atlantic | 63% |
| South Central | 67% |
| West | 29% |
Development and evolution of the "New South" (1945–present)
In the decades after World War II, the old agrarian Southern economy evolved into the "New South" – a manufacturing region with strong roots in laissez faire capitalism. As a result, high-rise buildings began to crowd the skylines of Atlanta, Birmingham, Charlotte, Raleigh-Durham, Houston, Dallas, Nashville, and Little Rock.This industrialization and modernization of the South picked up speed with the ending of racial segregation laws in the 1970s. Today, the economy of the South is a diverse mixture of agriculture, light and heavy industry, tourism, and high technology companies, and is becoming increasingly integrated into the global economy
Economic globalization
Economic globalization refers to increasing economic interdependence of national economies across the world through a rapid increase in cross-border movement of goods, service, technology and capital...
. With the expansion of jobs in the South, there has been migration of people from northern and midwestern regions for work, increasing population and political influence of southern states.
See also
- Southern United StatesSouthern United StatesThe Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
- Southern literatureSouthern literatureSouthern literature is defined as American literature about the Southern United States or by writers from this region...
- Politics of the Southern United StatesPolitics of the Southern United StatesPolitics of the Southern United States refers to the political landscape of the Southern United States. Due to the region's unique cultural and historic heritage, the American South has been prominently involved in numerous political issues faced by the United States as a whole, including States'...
- Triangular tradeTriangular tradeTriangular trade, or triangle trade, is a historical term indicating among three ports or regions. Triangular trade usually evolves when a region has export commodities that are not required in the region from which its major imports come...
- History of the United StatesHistory of the United StatesThe history of the United States traditionally starts with the Declaration of Independence in the year 1776, although its territory was inhabited by Native Americans since prehistoric times and then by European colonists who followed the voyages of Christopher Columbus starting in 1492. The...
- American Civil WarAmerican Civil WarThe American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
- Confederate States of AmericaConfederate States of AmericaThe Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...
- Border statesBorder states (Civil War)In the context of the American Civil War, the border states were slave states that did not declare their secession from the United States before April 1861...
- European colonization of the Southern United StatesEuropean colonization of the Southern United States-European colonization:The predominant culture of the South was rooted in the settlement of the region by British colonists. In the seventeenth century, most voluntary immigrants were of English origins who settled chiefly along the coastal regions of the Eastern seaboard...
- Dueling in the United States SouthDueling in the United States SouthDueling was a common practice in the U.S. South from the seventeenth to the end of the nineteenth century. Although the dueling largely disappeared in the early nineteenth century in the North, it remained a common practice in the South until the end of the century, where the concept of honor...
External references
- Thomas P. Abernethy. The South in the New Nation, 1789–1819. LSU Press.
- John R. Alden. The South in the Revolution, 1763–1789. LSU Press.
- Edward L. Ayers; The Promise of the New South: Life after Reconstruction Oxford University Press, 1993 online edition
- Numan V. Bartley. The New South, 1945–1980. LSU Press.
- Avery O. Craven. The Growth of Southern Nationalism, 1848–1861. LSU Press.
- Wesley Frank Craven. The Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, 1607–1689. LSU Press.
- E. Merton Coulter. The Confederate States of America, 1861–1865. LSU Press.
- E. Merton Coulter. The South During Reconstruction, 1865–1877. LSU Press.
- John Samuel Ezell; The South since 1865 Macmillan, 1963.
- Heather A. Haveman. "Antebellum literary culture and the evolution of American magazines." Poetics 32 (2004): 5-28.
- William B. Hesseltine; A History of the South, 1607-1936 Prentice-Hall, 1936 online edition
- David M. Katzman, "Black Migration," in The Reader's Companion to American History, Houghton Mifflin Co. (accessed July 6, 2005);
- Jay B. Hubbell; The South in American Literature, 1607-1900 Duke University Press, 1973
- Alexander P. Lamis, ed. Southern Politics in the 1990s Louisiana State University Press, 1999.
- James LoewenJames LoewenJames W. Loewen is a sociologist, historian, and author whose best-known work is Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong .-Early life and career:...
, Lies Across AmericaLies Across AmericaLies Across America is James Loewen's follow up to his 1995 work Lies My Teacher Told Me. The book, published in 2000, focuses on historical markers and museums across the United States....
, New York: Touchstone, 1999. - Rayford LoganRayford LoganRayford Whittingham Logan was an African-American historian and Pan-African activist. He was best known for his study of post-Reconstruction America, a period he termed "the nadir of American race relations"...
,The Betrayal of the Negro from Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson,, 1997. (This is an expanded edition of Logan, The Negro in American Life and Thought, The Nadir, 1877-1901 (1954) - Marrs, Aaron W. Railroads in the Old South: Pursuing Progress in a Slave Society (2009)
- Laurence W. Moreland; et al. Blacks in Southern Politics Praeger Publishers, 1987 online edition readings from primary and secondary sources
- Michael Perman; Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888-1908 University of North Carolina Press, 2001
- John David Smith and John C. Inscoe, eds; Ulrich Bonnell Phillips: A Southern Historian and His Critics Greenwood Press, 1990 online edition
- Charles W. Sydnor. The Development of Southern Sectionalism, 1819–1848. LSU Press.
- George B. Tindall. The Emergence of the New South, 1913–1945. LSU Press.
- C. Vann WoodwardC. Vann WoodwardComer Vann Woodward was a preeminent American historian focusing primarily on the American South and race relations. He was considered, along with Richard Hofstadter and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., to be one of the most influential historians of the postwar era, 1940s-1970s, both by scholars and by...
. Origins of the New South, 1877–1913. LSU Press.
External links
- DocSouth: Documenting the American South - numerous online text, image, and audio collections.