Post by Insightful on Mar 20, 2005 14:47:59 GMT -5
Slave-breeding in the American South
First of all what is termed “the South” is a mere cultural, historical and political extension rather than a geographical one. One could throw the state of Delaware in this group if one so desired (everybody forgets that this little mid-Atlantic state was slave-holding right up to the Civil War). And prairie Kansas could have very well become a slave-pen, too (refer to Bleeding Kansas). But for the sake of clarity let me define the South as stretching from Maryland to Texas/Missouri to Florida. Certainly not all of these states broke away from the Union during the Civil War. Upper southern states such as Missouri, Maryland and Kentucky did not become part of the Confederate States of America (***CSA***) or Confederacy in the 1860s; nevertheless, they were very much southern in outlook and they had slavery.
I’ve wondered how is it that a state like Alabama or Mississippi, admitted into the Union years after 1808 (when the international slave trade was banned), could each have slave populations of over 400,000 by the eve of the Civil War in 1861. Growth rates which same hard to fathom with no outlet from Africa are in fact explained by looking closely at the upper South.
Maryland is a very interesting state, another forgotten slave-holding state in my opinion. One forgets that she produced two famous runaways: Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglas. Large-scale slavery like that of the Caribbean did not exist in Maryland for a variety of reasons but I’ll just narrow it down to climate, which in itself influences many things such as the types of crops, their demand, etc. Early on (as was the case almost everywhere in the New World) it was thought that slavery was needed because it was fashionable and profitable, and in this specific case Tobacco became the cash crop.
Everyone knows that slaves were brought on ships to America from Africa. To a point that is true, but if one does research, many times they did not come directly from Africa as the adage goes. At least not to Maryland (probably the opposite in Georgia and South Carolina but even they had their ties to the islands). If they were born in Africa (as many were), then they came via the Caribbean, or they were Caribbean-born slaves. In one biography of Frederick Douglas(1817-1895) part of his family was traced to Barbados. Anyway, sometimes Maryland planters would purchase slave hands from the West Indies (another name for ‘Caribbean’) or ships making the triangle route between Europe, Africa and the West Indies would be sailing on the European leg from the West Indies and make a stop for Maryland goods such as tobacco and materials before turning across the Atlantic. This was exchanged for slaves and other stuff from the Caribbean. The slaves would be loaded off at the port of Baltimore or Annapolis where they would be auctioned off to planters in the Chesapeake. Picture this scenery going on for well over a century. Slavery was not terribly profitable in Maryland but it was definitely fashionable and was simply part of the flourishing trade with Europe and the Caribbean. A trade that helped to establish the port of Baltimore as a tobacco port which soon diversified into flour milling and shipbuilding.
Enter King Cotton and another Caribbean connection: Previous to 1790 the United States did not export a single pound of cotton. Whitney’s invention came into operation in 1793, and in 1794 1.6 million pounds were suddenly exported. In 1791 America grew only 1/245th of the produce offered in the markets of the world; in 1845, more than seven-eighths of the cotton produced in the world was in the USA; and in 1861 they gave upwards of one thousand millions of pounds. What the hell happened? Well it started with Sea Island cotton (also known as long staple cotton), which came originally from the Isle of Anguilla, in the Caribbean Sea, and furnished the first seed to the early European settlers in the Bahamas; in two islands of the cluster known as Long Island and Exuma, they succeeded in producing a fine cotton. A small bag of the seed was sent to a gentleman in Georgia about the year 1785. The seed was first planted off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina where it did well and became profitable—especially after Whitney’s ‘cotton gin’ came into existence and cut down the many man-hours it took to remove the cotton from the seeds and chaff; however, it did not grow well inland—being limited to coastal areas between 33 and 30 degrees north latitude. But after Whitney’s machine enabled the short-staple cotton to be ginned at a rapid pace, which could grow well inland, cotton became ‘King’ and the whole dynamics of the south changed. The need for field hands to plant and pick short-staple cotton became acute. Eli Whitney’s practical invention was the prime mover and shaker.
Where slavery was really needed now in Mainland North America was in the Deep South, virgin territories like Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, etc. The only problem was that these places did not become states until years after 1808 (when the international slave trade was banned). Where did they get their massive manpower from between their admission to the union and the Civil War (a relatively short time space)? It was obvious that older states like Maryland had an edge or advantage. They also had a comparatively unnecessary and really burgeoning slave population, too. Slaves in the U.S.—especially in the Upper South like Maryland did not work as hard as those in the West Indies or in Brazil. They were also better fed and better taken care of; hence, a greater ratio of births to deaths. It was more of the reverse in the West Indies and Brazil. This situation inevitably created a market for the slave-starved new states of the Deep South. Maryland along with states like Virginia and Kentucky began to fill the void. Now this situation of siphoning slaves ‘down river’ was extremely profitable for them. ‘Negro Speculators’ from Old states undertook the part of breeding and rearing bondsmen and women till they attained physical vigor, and the new states that of using up in the development of their virgin resources the physical vigor which had been thus attained. Slave men and women were now being referred to as bucks (e.g. ‘Kentucky buck’) and wenches. Women were definitely valued on how many children they could produce. William Styron, in his best-selling novel The Confessions of Nat Turner, has one of his characters, Judge Jeremiah Cobb, describe Virginia as “A monstrous breeding farm” to supply “Little black infants by the score, the hundreds, the thousands, the tens of thousands! The fairest state of them all, this tranquil and beloved domain—what has it now become? A nursery for Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas.” In the controversy surrounding Styron’s novel, a leading black critic, Mike Thelwell of the University of Massachusetts, referred to Virginia and Maryland landholders as “enlightened aristocrats” who bred “black men and women like animals for the purpose of supplying the labor markets of the Deep South.”<br>
The black population of the United States more than quadrupled from 1,000,000 to well over 4,000,000 during the period 1800 to 1860, an incredible rate of almost entirely natural increase. Here is something else to consider, while there was a steady flow of men, women and children to the new states, the older slave states did not decline in their slave populations. Their populations continued to climb thru the decades of the 1800s (albeit at a much slower rate than the new states). The powers that be were meticulous enough to traffic their slaves elsewhere and still not retard their own local growth rates severely enough to reverse them, only slow the rate down as it were. At the same time other slave populations of the New World were decreasing, stagnant or growing at a much slower rate. North American slavers were efficient; they had an almost cattle system of production when it came to the rearing of slaves for the Deep South. America always had more native born slaves than foreign born slaves at any one time than any other country of the New World
I’ll wrap up by stating that the African-descended population of the United States today is between 35 million and 40 million, larger than any single other country in the New World. Some people are tempted to say Brazil has a larger black population, but according to their 1990s census the “visibly black” (there are a lot of extremely mixed people in Brazil) population only numbered around 10.5 million. When one looks at Brazil’s slave population at the time of emancipation in 1888 it numbered around 2 million, while the U.S. slave population numbered nearly 4 million going into emancipation in the 1860s. Another point is that Brazil had the bulk of the slave trade for any one country. The original base of the American black population (all blacks brought in from outside America) is relatively smaller (about 400,000) thereby being much more homogeneous than other New World countries. So I end with the question of was Eugenics going on before the 20th Century in America?
First of all what is termed “the South” is a mere cultural, historical and political extension rather than a geographical one. One could throw the state of Delaware in this group if one so desired (everybody forgets that this little mid-Atlantic state was slave-holding right up to the Civil War). And prairie Kansas could have very well become a slave-pen, too (refer to Bleeding Kansas). But for the sake of clarity let me define the South as stretching from Maryland to Texas/Missouri to Florida. Certainly not all of these states broke away from the Union during the Civil War. Upper southern states such as Missouri, Maryland and Kentucky did not become part of the Confederate States of America (***CSA***) or Confederacy in the 1860s; nevertheless, they were very much southern in outlook and they had slavery.
I’ve wondered how is it that a state like Alabama or Mississippi, admitted into the Union years after 1808 (when the international slave trade was banned), could each have slave populations of over 400,000 by the eve of the Civil War in 1861. Growth rates which same hard to fathom with no outlet from Africa are in fact explained by looking closely at the upper South.
Maryland is a very interesting state, another forgotten slave-holding state in my opinion. One forgets that she produced two famous runaways: Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglas. Large-scale slavery like that of the Caribbean did not exist in Maryland for a variety of reasons but I’ll just narrow it down to climate, which in itself influences many things such as the types of crops, their demand, etc. Early on (as was the case almost everywhere in the New World) it was thought that slavery was needed because it was fashionable and profitable, and in this specific case Tobacco became the cash crop.
Everyone knows that slaves were brought on ships to America from Africa. To a point that is true, but if one does research, many times they did not come directly from Africa as the adage goes. At least not to Maryland (probably the opposite in Georgia and South Carolina but even they had their ties to the islands). If they were born in Africa (as many were), then they came via the Caribbean, or they were Caribbean-born slaves. In one biography of Frederick Douglas(1817-1895) part of his family was traced to Barbados. Anyway, sometimes Maryland planters would purchase slave hands from the West Indies (another name for ‘Caribbean’) or ships making the triangle route between Europe, Africa and the West Indies would be sailing on the European leg from the West Indies and make a stop for Maryland goods such as tobacco and materials before turning across the Atlantic. This was exchanged for slaves and other stuff from the Caribbean. The slaves would be loaded off at the port of Baltimore or Annapolis where they would be auctioned off to planters in the Chesapeake. Picture this scenery going on for well over a century. Slavery was not terribly profitable in Maryland but it was definitely fashionable and was simply part of the flourishing trade with Europe and the Caribbean. A trade that helped to establish the port of Baltimore as a tobacco port which soon diversified into flour milling and shipbuilding.
Enter King Cotton and another Caribbean connection: Previous to 1790 the United States did not export a single pound of cotton. Whitney’s invention came into operation in 1793, and in 1794 1.6 million pounds were suddenly exported. In 1791 America grew only 1/245th of the produce offered in the markets of the world; in 1845, more than seven-eighths of the cotton produced in the world was in the USA; and in 1861 they gave upwards of one thousand millions of pounds. What the hell happened? Well it started with Sea Island cotton (also known as long staple cotton), which came originally from the Isle of Anguilla, in the Caribbean Sea, and furnished the first seed to the early European settlers in the Bahamas; in two islands of the cluster known as Long Island and Exuma, they succeeded in producing a fine cotton. A small bag of the seed was sent to a gentleman in Georgia about the year 1785. The seed was first planted off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina where it did well and became profitable—especially after Whitney’s ‘cotton gin’ came into existence and cut down the many man-hours it took to remove the cotton from the seeds and chaff; however, it did not grow well inland—being limited to coastal areas between 33 and 30 degrees north latitude. But after Whitney’s machine enabled the short-staple cotton to be ginned at a rapid pace, which could grow well inland, cotton became ‘King’ and the whole dynamics of the south changed. The need for field hands to plant and pick short-staple cotton became acute. Eli Whitney’s practical invention was the prime mover and shaker.
Where slavery was really needed now in Mainland North America was in the Deep South, virgin territories like Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, etc. The only problem was that these places did not become states until years after 1808 (when the international slave trade was banned). Where did they get their massive manpower from between their admission to the union and the Civil War (a relatively short time space)? It was obvious that older states like Maryland had an edge or advantage. They also had a comparatively unnecessary and really burgeoning slave population, too. Slaves in the U.S.—especially in the Upper South like Maryland did not work as hard as those in the West Indies or in Brazil. They were also better fed and better taken care of; hence, a greater ratio of births to deaths. It was more of the reverse in the West Indies and Brazil. This situation inevitably created a market for the slave-starved new states of the Deep South. Maryland along with states like Virginia and Kentucky began to fill the void. Now this situation of siphoning slaves ‘down river’ was extremely profitable for them. ‘Negro Speculators’ from Old states undertook the part of breeding and rearing bondsmen and women till they attained physical vigor, and the new states that of using up in the development of their virgin resources the physical vigor which had been thus attained. Slave men and women were now being referred to as bucks (e.g. ‘Kentucky buck’) and wenches. Women were definitely valued on how many children they could produce. William Styron, in his best-selling novel The Confessions of Nat Turner, has one of his characters, Judge Jeremiah Cobb, describe Virginia as “A monstrous breeding farm” to supply “Little black infants by the score, the hundreds, the thousands, the tens of thousands! The fairest state of them all, this tranquil and beloved domain—what has it now become? A nursery for Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas.” In the controversy surrounding Styron’s novel, a leading black critic, Mike Thelwell of the University of Massachusetts, referred to Virginia and Maryland landholders as “enlightened aristocrats” who bred “black men and women like animals for the purpose of supplying the labor markets of the Deep South.”<br>
The black population of the United States more than quadrupled from 1,000,000 to well over 4,000,000 during the period 1800 to 1860, an incredible rate of almost entirely natural increase. Here is something else to consider, while there was a steady flow of men, women and children to the new states, the older slave states did not decline in their slave populations. Their populations continued to climb thru the decades of the 1800s (albeit at a much slower rate than the new states). The powers that be were meticulous enough to traffic their slaves elsewhere and still not retard their own local growth rates severely enough to reverse them, only slow the rate down as it were. At the same time other slave populations of the New World were decreasing, stagnant or growing at a much slower rate. North American slavers were efficient; they had an almost cattle system of production when it came to the rearing of slaves for the Deep South. America always had more native born slaves than foreign born slaves at any one time than any other country of the New World
I’ll wrap up by stating that the African-descended population of the United States today is between 35 million and 40 million, larger than any single other country in the New World. Some people are tempted to say Brazil has a larger black population, but according to their 1990s census the “visibly black” (there are a lot of extremely mixed people in Brazil) population only numbered around 10.5 million. When one looks at Brazil’s slave population at the time of emancipation in 1888 it numbered around 2 million, while the U.S. slave population numbered nearly 4 million going into emancipation in the 1860s. Another point is that Brazil had the bulk of the slave trade for any one country. The original base of the American black population (all blacks brought in from outside America) is relatively smaller (about 400,000) thereby being much more homogeneous than other New World countries. So I end with the question of was Eugenics going on before the 20th Century in America?
