Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > History
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
Reply Start New Thread
 
Old 05-20-2014, 06:04 PM
 
31,387 posts, read 36,950,999 times
Reputation: 15038

Advertisements

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nighteyes View Post
Also, I think the term "plantation system" is both inaccurate and misleading. There were plenty of smaller holdings and other business endeavors, none of which were nearly as splendid as the stereotypical plantation, that used slaves and helped to support the regional economy.
Actually the plantation system is quite accurate. Tobacco, rice and cotton require large tracts of land to be profitable. The fact that there were numerous smaller farming concerns or even the existence of merchants and mechanics is immaterial since they supplied the ancillary economy need to support the larger agricultural concerns.

By the way, there were very few stereotypical plantations because the large land holders preferred not to live in mosquito infested lowlands, or the hot humid tracts that comprised their holding, living instead in the great cities of the south.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 05-21-2014, 09:45 PM
 
31,676 posts, read 26,605,989 times
Reputation: 24526
Quote:
Originally Posted by ovcatto View Post
Actually the plantation system is quite accurate. Tobacco, rice and cotton require large tracts of land to be profitable. The fact that there were numerous smaller farming concerns or even the existence of merchants and mechanics is immaterial since they supplied the ancillary economy need to support the larger agricultural concerns.

By the way, there were very few stereotypical plantations because the large land holders preferred not to live in mosquito infested lowlands, or the hot humid tracts that comprised their holding, living instead in the great cities of the south.
Which is why when slavery was ended Southern white landowners moved to the sharecropping system. For all intents and purposes the effects were the same for those living under either system though the latter probably carried a bit less violence.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-22-2014, 02:00 AM
 
1,161 posts, read 2,437,998 times
Reputation: 2613
While it's true the vast majority of people in the South were small farmers (who did not own slaves), the Southern economy was dominated by the plantation system. The plantation model was used to develop the South's agricultural wealth and resources and even settlement patterns and given that much of the wealth came out of the plantations, the planter elite controlled the political and economic systems in the South. It was an odd place for while the South idealized the Jacksonian ideal of the independent (white) man who owned his own lands, the reality was the elite Southerners, who were almost wholly plantation based, ruled much of the South like a semi-feudal fiefdom. It was the planter class more than anyone else who drove the South towards secession and the Civil War.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Nighteyes View Post
Also, I think the term "plantation system" is both inaccurate and misleading. There were plenty of smaller holdings and other business endeavors, none of which were nearly as splendid as the stereotypical plantation, that used slaves and helped to support the regional economy.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-22-2014, 07:43 AM
 
Location: Jamestown, NY
7,840 posts, read 9,157,947 times
Reputation: 13779
Quote:
Originally Posted by le roi View Post
idk. while grandstander's maps are very helpful, i believe you're better off looking at the % of slaves rather than agricultural output.


but it also depends on what you mean by "plantation", and whether small farms, or non-slaveowning farmers, would qualify.
Some "plantations" in the South were hardly what we think of as "plantations" today. Just about any farmer who owned a couple of slaves to help work his land considered himself a "planter", and many "plantations", especially in areas that had been settled for < 30 (like parts of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas), might consist of only a couple of hundred acres and a story-and-half farmhouse that might even still be made of logs) even if the "planter" owned 5 or 6 slaves.

Keep in mind that in the antebellum era, it's estimated that a single man could probably only work about 50 acres, and with some of the labor intensive crops like rice, slaves couldn't even work that much.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-22-2014, 04:40 PM
 
31,387 posts, read 36,950,999 times
Reputation: 15038
Quote:
Originally Posted by Linda_d View Post
Some "plantations" in the South were hardly what we think of as "plantations" today.
Actually, I ran across references that in order to be considered a plantation the enterprise required at least it least 1,000 acres and 50 or more slaves. Even more telling is that slave holders with 50 or more slaves owned one third of the slave population that resulted in 60% of all land being owned by 10% of the richest Southern farmers.

I would however go so far as to agree that the romanticized image of "Gone With The Wind" plantations estates populating the slave states inaccurate and while many sumptuous estates did exist, for the most part wealth plantation owners were absentee living instead in cities like Richmond, Charleston, New Orleans, Mobile and Vicksburg.

Two really excellent papers on the economy of Southern agriculture before and after the war.

http://www.econ.upf.edu/gpefm/jm/pdf...JMP%20Ager.pdf

The Agrarian South
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-22-2014, 08:16 PM
 
Location: North of Canada, but not the Arctic
21,026 posts, read 19,483,733 times
Reputation: 25497
In South Carolina and Mississippi, approximately half of the white families owned slaves.
In Georgia, 2/5ths
In Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida, 1/3rd
In Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Texas, 1/5th
In Maryland and Missouri, 1/8th
In Deleware, 1/13th

In 1860, 88% of slaveowners had less than 20 slaves
74% had less than 10
50% had less than 5

Only about 10,000 families had more than 50 slaves
Only about 3000 families had more than 100 slaves

Conversely, about 3/4ths of slaves belonged to masters who had less than 10 slaves
More than half lived on plantations with more than 20 slaves
1/4th lived on units with more than 50 slaves

Large slaveholdings were more proportionally more numerous in the Deep South than the Upper South:
In Louisiana, 1/6th of the slaves lived on units of less than 10
In Kentucky, almost half lived on units of less than 10

The bulk of slaves were concentrated in certain areas that were best suited for the production of staple crops, for example, the alluvial river bottoms where the soil was rich and markets were easily accessible:
The sugar parishes of Louisiana
The Yazoo Basin and around Natchez in Mississippi
The Black Belt of Alabama
The rice swamps and sea islands of South Carolina and Georgia

The proportion of slavess in total population:
South Carolina 57%
Mississippi 55%
Louisiana 47%
Alabama and Florida 45%
Georgia 44%
North Carolina 33%
Virginia 31%
Texas 30%
Arkansas 26%
Tennessee 25%
Kentucky 20%
Maryland 13%
Missouri 10%

Doesn't directly answer your question, just a few facts from the book I'm reading (The Peculiar Institution by Kenneth M. Stampp pages 30-32).
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-22-2014, 08:49 PM
 
Location: Old Mother Idaho
29,184 posts, read 22,216,042 times
Reputation: 23813
So far, little has been mentioned about cotton. Cotton is the most versatile natural fabric crop on earth. The fibers can do it all, while all the other natural fibers all have limits of some kind.
The two most profitable crops the south grew were tobacco and cotton. Of the two, cotton was by far the most profitable, because so little of the world is suitable for it's growth. India is one, and the British Empire was built on the profits of Indian grown cotton.

The South's ability to grow cotton after the revolution meant our cotton was the only large supply that lay outside of British restrictions, price controls, and licensure. The British made as much money from control of the crop as from the crop itself. American cotton growers offered better cotton at a much better price to the rest of the world, and the rest of the world bought just as much as they could. Whitney's cotton gin enabled the cotton growers to produce even more of the high quality cotton we grew.
The Indian cotton was a different variety that produced less and had coarser fibers. It's also naturally slightly tan colored, while ours was pure white. Ours, much finer in fiber and white, allowed the weaving of much finer fabrics that could be dyed in much brighter and more pure colors. The cotton gin allowed us to get the cotton much faster to market, and much cheaper to produce as raw fiber.

American cotton was also much harder on the soil than Indian or Egyptian cotton. The land soon becomes depleted, and required the steady addition of new land, or the necessity to move to a different region if no surrounding lands were available. Many of the biggest planters moved steadily southward as their first plantations' land was depleted, taking their fortunes with them. The second plantation was usually larger and finer than the first, and as size increased, so did the number of slaves needed for the crop. It was a very human intensive crop to grow, and it needed constant human attention to produce at it's best.

The Mississippi bottom lands and the delta were so fertile that the land didn't easily deplete. The river constantly re-fertilized the land with the yearly flood cycles, very much like the Nile did, but unlike the Nile, the surrounding country wasn't a desert. It's no wonder that the states that had the most slaves were the states were either coastal, where they got lots of rain, or have the Big River running through them.

Tobbacco was very often the following crop after the land was depleted. The farmers knew the value of crop rotation, resting the soil, and fertilization, but there was so much new land here, it was always easier to by more or move for the cotton growers. The other farmers could restore the depleted soil, and often bought former plantations at bargain prices. Tobbacco and other crops might not have paid as well, but they certainly paid enough to be steadily profitable. Pork was another important product, and pork was also a desirable export when cured and salted. Between pigs, tobacco, whiskey and some other crops, a farmer born poor could end up becoming respectably prosperous by middle age.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-23-2014, 06:43 AM
 
1,161 posts, read 2,437,998 times
Reputation: 2613
There's something slightly off with the percentages below. If 3/4ths of slaves belonged to owners with fewer than 10 slaves, then how could more than half of slaves lived on plantations with more than 20 slaves?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Retroit View Post

Conversely, about 3/4ths of slaves belonged to masters who had less than 10 slaves
More than half lived on plantations with more than 20 slaves
1/4th lived on units with more than 50 slaves
(The Peculiar Institution by Kenneth M. Stampp pages 30-32).
I have come across a number of plantations where there were as many as 100 slaves or more, but the ownership of the slaves were divided among different branches of a family. A man could die and leave half his slaves to his son and the other half to his daughter. The son remained on the plantation and farmed the lands, while the daughter married and went to live in a town, but her slaves remained on the plantation and she received (presumably) an income from the plantation revenues.

Perhaps that explains the discrepancy?

Many "plantations" in the deep South were in reality field camps, managed by an overseer who watched over a few dozen slaves for a remote owner who was based elsewhere. The richer planter families often had multiple plantations, even in other states, but the secondary plantations wouldn't have fit the stereotypical mold with a big house. They were strictly for investment for as soon as the yield from the crops dropped and the quality of the soil started to wear out from intensive farming, the plantation would be sold and the owner would buy newer, fresher lands elsewhere and move his slaves there.

For people who want a good idea for what the range of plantation houses looked like, especially in black belt of Georgia-Alabama-Mississippi, the Library of Congress has a fascinating collection of photographs taken in the 1930s of these old houses, which were mostly badly decaying or abandoned by that point. The photographs destroy a lot of stereotypes about the grandiosity of the majority of plantation houses, although there were still a few impressive places.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-23-2014, 10:35 AM
Status: "108 N/A" (set 29 days ago)
 
12,909 posts, read 13,586,976 times
Reputation: 9624
Corn production was also crucial to the self sufficiency of the plantation system. The entire system was corn dependent. People ,horses, cows, chickens ,pork all need corn.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-23-2014, 05:45 PM
 
Location: North of Canada, but not the Arctic
21,026 posts, read 19,483,733 times
Reputation: 25497
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallybalt View Post
There's something slightly off with the percentages below. If 3/4ths of slaves belonged to owners with fewer than 10 slaves, then how could more than half of slaves lived on plantations with more than 20 slaves?
Sorry about that. I should have said: "about 3/4ths of slaves belonged to masters who had more than 10 slaves". My apologies - I had to paraphrase a few pages of writing and got my lesses and mores mixed up.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:

Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > History

All times are GMT -6. The time now is 01:16 AM.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top