Chapter 16 Notes

Chapter 16 Notes

Chapter 16: The South and the Slavery Controversy

Introduction
• Uncertainty of how to deal with the slavery issue
• Cotton gin invention banished all ideas of freeing the slaves (slavery suddenly lucrative)
• Growth of slavery would soon threaten the survival of the nation
• Slavery faced a rocky future
o Thomas Jefferson
▪ Talked openly of freeing their slaves
• Eli Whitney
o Wide-scale cultivation of short-staple cotton
o White fiber became dominant crop
o Demand increased for labor
I. “Cotton is King!
a. Huge agricultural factory
b. Drew planters to the virgin bottomlands of the Gulf States
c. Northern shippers is a large part of the profits from the cotton trade
i. Transported to England
d. Prosperity of North and South, depended on slaves
e. Cotton- half value of all American exports after 1840.
f. South produced more than half of the entire world’s supply of cotton
g. Britain is the leading industrial power
i. Cotton cloth was most important manufacture
h. South got a sense of power
i. War between and south then North would cut off cotton
II. The Planter “Aristocracy”
a. South= oligarchy influenced by a planter aristocracy
b. Planter aristocracy
i. Great wealth
ii. Great education for student, statecraft and leisure
c. John Calhoun and Jefferson Davis
i. Served the public
1. Widened the gap between the rich and poor
a. Favorite author was Sir Walter Scott, who helped idealize a feudal society
ii. Southern aristocrats
1. Perpetrated medievalism
d. Mark Twain accused him of starting the civil war
e. Plantation system
i. Shaped women’s lives
ii. No slaveholding...

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