"were Christians) under oath: ""Negroes (slave or free) will feel the sanctions of an oath, with as much force as any of the ignorant classes of white people, in a Christian country."" Antebellum South Carolina Antebellum South Carolina is typically defined by historians as South Carolina during the period between the War of 1812, which ended in 1815, and the American Civil War, which began in 1861. After the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, the economies of the Upcountry and the Lowcountry of the state became fairly equal in wealth. The expansion of cotton cultivation upstate led to"
"Plantations in the American South Plantations are an important aspect of the history of the American South, particularly the antebellum (pre-American Civil War) era. The mild subtropical climate, plentiful rainfall, and fertile soils of the southeastern United States allowed the flourishing of large plantations, where large numbers of workers, usually Africans held captive for slave labor, were required for agricultural production. An individual who owned a plantation was known as a planter. Historians of the antebellum South have generally defined ""planter"" most precisely as a person owning property (real estate) and 20 or more slaves. The wealthiest planters, such as"
"Agriculture in the prehistoric Southwest Agriculture in the prehistoric Southwest describes the agricultural practices of the Native Americans inhabiting the American Southwest, which includes the states of Arizona and New Mexico plus portions of surrounding states and neighboring Mexico. Maize (corn) was the dominant crop. Introduced from Mesoamerica, it was first cultivated in the Southwest about 2100 BCE. Sedentary cultures based on farming developed afterwards including the Hohokam, Mogollon, Ancestral Puebloans, and Patayan. Due to a deficiency in precipitation throughout the region, irrigation and several techniques of water harvesting and conservation were essential for successful agriculture. Although it is possible"
"slaves or workers. Planters themselves also usually maintained a small flower or vegetable garden. Cash crops were not grown in these small garden plots, but rather garden plants and vegetables for enjoyment. Plantations in the American South Plantations are an important aspect of the history of the American South, particularly the antebellum (pre-American Civil War) era. The mild subtropical climate, plentiful rainfall, and fertile soils of the southeastern United States allowed the flourishing of large plantations, where large numbers of workers, usually Africans held captive for slave labor, were required for agricultural production. An individual who owned a plantation was"
"Antebellum South The Antebellum era was a period in the history of the Southern United States, from the late 18th century until the start of the American Civil War in 1861, marked by the economic growth of the South. The plantation-era South saw large expansions in agriculture while manufacturing growth remained relatively slow. The southern economy was characterized by a low level of capital accumulation (largely labor-based) and a shortage of liquid capital, which, when aggravated by the need to concentrate on a few staples, the pervasive anti-industrial, and anti-urban ideology, and the reduction of southern banking, led to a"
"different regions of the South. As the Upper South of the Chesapeake Bay colonies developed first, historians of the antebellum South defined planters as those who held 20 or more slaves. Major planters held many more, especially in the Deep South as it developed. The majority of slaveholders held 10 or fewer slaves, often just a few to labor domestically. By the late 18th century, most planters in the Upper South had switched from exclusive tobacco cultivation to mixed-crop production, both because tobacco had exhausted the soil and because of changing markets. The shift away from tobacco meant they had"
"European American scholar described the Native Americans (as well as any other tribal society) as having a society dominated by clans or gentes (in the Roman model) before tribes were formed. There were some common characteristics: Subdivision and differentiation took place between various groups. Some functions and attributes of tribes are: An early crop the Native Americans grew was squash. Others early crops included cotton, sunflower, pumpkins, tobacco, goosefoot, knotgrass, and sump weed. Agriculture in the southwest started around 4,000 years ago when traders brought cultigens from Mexico. Due to the varying climate, some ingenuity was needed for agriculture to"
"retain their identities and part of their traditional lands. The once numerous Opata have disappeared as a distinct people but their descendants still occupy the valleys of the Sonora River and its tributaries. Agriculture in the prehistoric Southwest Agriculture in the prehistoric Southwest describes the agricultural practices of the Native Americans inhabiting the American Southwest, which includes the states of Arizona and New Mexico plus portions of surrounding states and neighboring Mexico. Maize (corn) was the dominant crop. Introduced from Mesoamerica, it was first cultivated in the Southwest about 2100 BCE. Sedentary cultures based on farming developed afterwards including the"
"areas. It made possible a new commodity crop in northern Louisiana, although sugar cane continued to be predominant in southern Louisiana. The Mississippi River Delta area in southeast Louisiana created the ideal alluvial soil necessary for the growing of sugar cane; sugar was the state's prime export during the antebellum period. The United States banned the importation of slaves in 1807–08. A brisk domestic slave trade developed; many thousands of black slaves were sold by slave holders in the Upper South to buyers in the Deep South, in what amounted to a significant forced migration. Early in 1811, while Louisiana"
"than in the rest of the Confederacy. Large numbers of slaves lived in the states along the border between the Union and Confederacy. Approximately 500,000 slaves lived in Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland; border slave states, which did not join the Confederacy. Most of the South's slaves were owned by planters (often defined as those who owned twenty of more slaves), although yeomen farmers outnumbered planters which numbered fewer than 50,000. Southern agriculture was more lucrative than northern, focusing on crops of rice, cotton, and sugar. Even before the war, in the rice regions of Georgia and South Carolina and in"
"the Iroquois and Huron cultivated the soil for maize or ""Indian corn"". Maize (""Zea mays""), potatoes (""Solanum tuberosum""), beans (""phaseolus""), squash (""Cucurbita"") and the sunflower (""Helianthus annus"") were grown throughout agricultural lands in North America by the 16th century. As early as 2300 BC evidence of squash was introduced to the northeastern woodlands region. Archaeological findings from 500 AD have shown corn cultivation in southern Ontario. Eastern Canada was settled well before the West. Immigration and trading posts came later to Rupert's Land and the Northwest Territories. The early immigrants combined European agricultural and domestication procedures with the indigenous knowledge"
"compacted by the cattle and this did not give the soil enough oxygen to sustain life. In the United States, farms spread from the colonies westward along with the settlers. In cooler regions, wheat was often the crop of choice when lands were newly settled, leading to a ""wheat frontier"" that moved westward over the course of years. Also very common in the antebellum Midwest was farming corn while raising hogs, complementing each other especially since it was difficult to get grain to market before the canals and railroads. After the ""wheat frontier"" had passed through an area, more diversified"
"was first started in Mesoamerica and spread north. About 2,000 years ago it reached eastern America. This crop was important to the Native Americans because it was part of their everyday diet; it could be stored in underground pits during the winter, and no part of it was wasted. The husk was made into art crafts, and the cob was used as fuel for fires. By 800 CE the Native Americans had established three main crops — beans, squash, and corn — called the three sisters. The agriculture gender roles of the Native Americans varied from region to region. In"
"commodity crops. Its planters rapidly acquired a significantly higher number and proportion of slaves in the population overall, as its commodity crops were labor-intensive. Early on, enslaved people in the South worked primarily in agriculture, on farms and plantations growing indigo, rice, and tobacco; cotton did not become a major crop until after the American Revolution and after the 1790s. Before then long-staple cotton was cultivated primarily on the Sea Islands of Georgia and South Carolina. The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 enabled the cultivation of short-staple cotton in a wide variety of mainland areas, leading in the"
"farming (the Black Belt of Alabama), but has become more commonly used today to refer to the region of the South with a high percentage of African-Americans. In contrast, the Upland South was less involved with slavery from the start. In addition, the Cotton Belt of the Deep South was controlled by Indians (mainly the Five Civilized Tribes of the Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole) powerful enough to keep pioneering settlers from moving into the region. The Deep South's cotton boom did not occur until after the Indians were forced west in the early 19th century. In contrast, the"
"Agriculture on the prehistoric Great Plains Agriculture on the prehistoric Great Plains describes the agriculture of the Indian peoples of the Great Plains of the United States and southern Canada in the Pre-Columbian era and before extensive contact with European explorers, which in most areas occurred by 1750. The principal crops grown by Indian farmers were maize (corn), beans, and squash, including pumpkins. Sunflowers, goosefoot, tobacco, gourds, and plums, were also grown. Evidence of agriculture is found in all Central Plains complexes. Archaeological sites in Nebraska reveal cultivated crops such as little barley (""Hordeum pusillum""), sunflowers (""Helianthus annuus""), goosefoot (""Chenopodium"
"were easier to extract from the shells or husks. This was evidence that Indigenous gardeners were selectively breeding the plants to make them more productive and accessible. Most experts had previously believed that agriculture in the U.S. was imported from Mexico, along with the trinity of subtropical crops: maize (corn), beans, and squash. What is now accepted is that the eastern United States was one of about ten regions in the world to become an ""independent center of agricultural origin."" The region of this early agriculture is in the middle Mississippi valley, from Memphis north to St. Louis and extending"
"there was abundant land suitable for plantation agriculture, which young men with some capital established. This was expansion of the white, monied population: younger men seeking their fortune. The most valuable crop that could be grown on a plantation in that climate was cotton. That crop was labor-intensive, and the least-costly laborers were slaves. Demand for slaves exceeded the supply in the southwest; therefore slaves, never cheap if they were productive, went for a higher price. As portrayed in Uncle Tom's Cabin (the ""original"" cabin was in Maryland), ""selling South"" was greatly feared. A recently (2018) publicized example of the"
"still stand in some of Little Dixie. All the crops grown there today are corn, soybeans and wheat, for which the area was better suited than for Southern crops like cotton or tobacco. Rural southern Missouri in the Ozark Plateau and the bootheel are definitively southern in culture. Many areas of New Mexico, Arizona and California were predominantly settled by European American southerners as they moved west in the 19th and early 20th centuries. For instance, pro-Confederate governments were established in what is now Arizona and New Mexico during the Civil War and, at one point, southern California was on"
"staple crops, such as sugarcane in the West Indies or tobacco in the American South. With economies largely based on these crops, the West Indies and American South would see the vast majority of indentured labour. Author and historian Richard Hofstadter has written: The most unenviable situation was that of servants on Southern plantations, living alongside but never with Negro slaves, both groups doing much the same work, often under the supervision of a relentless overseer… Even as late as 1770, William Eddis, the English surveyor of customs at Annapolis, thought that the Maryland Negroes were better off than ""the"
"South Carolina and Georgia. The economy of the South changed markedly beginning in the early nineteenth century, as the invention of the cotton gin made cultivation of short-staple cotton profitable across vast areas of the upland Southeast. Settlers poured into what became known as the Deep South, putting pressure on the federal government to remove the Native American tribes from the Southeast. In the 1830s, the government forced most of the Five Civilised Tribes to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River, leading to rapid development of extensive cotton plantations across the South to eastern Texas. Cotton was king, and"
"farmers. They grew most of their own food, using the corn crop to feed hogs and to distill into whiskey. They obtained their cash from sales of burley tobacco, hemp, horses and mules. The hemp was spun and woven for cotton bale bagging and ropes. Tobacco was labor-intensive to cultivate; planters were attracted to Kentucky from Maryland and Virginia, where their own lands were near exhaustion from tobacco cultivation. Tobacco was a labor-intensive crop, and plantations in the Bluegrass region used slave labor, but on a smaller scale than the cotton plantations of the Deep South. Adequate transportation routes proved"
"as mechanization of agriculture was introduced, leaving many unemployed. The Hopson Planting Company produced the first crop of cotton to be entirely planted, harvested, and baled by machinery in 1944. Native Americans were observed growing cotton by the Coronado expedition in the early 1540s. This also ushered the slave trade to meet the growing need for labour to grow cotton, a labor-intensive crop and a cash crop of immense economic worth. And in the American South an entire civilization was based the ""King Cotton"". As the chief crop, the southern part of United States prospered thanks to its slavery-dependent economy."
"figured prominently in early America either as land barons, governing authorities, and/or military leaders. Callawassie Island's acreage, fertile for planting, was largely dedicated to farming and livestock during this period, making way for successive cash crop industries in indigo and sea island cotton, which were in high demand by European trading nations. A small crop of sugar cane was attempted but failed due to climate conditions. The island's population was sparse, consisting of owner families and slaves who worked the farms. During the Antebellum years leading up to the Civil War, the island's owners, the Kirk family, continued to prosper"
"was very dull, typically comprising mainly some staple product made from rice, rye, barley, wheat, millet or maize. The addition of vegetable matter provided some variety to the diet. The staple diet of the Aztecs in Central America was maize and they cultivated tomatoes, avocados, beans, peppers, pumpkins, squashes, peanuts, and amaranth seeds to supplement their tortillas and porridge. In Peru, the Incas subsisted on maize in the lowlands and potatoes at higher altitudes. They also used seeds from quinoa, supplementing their diet with peppers, tomatoes, and avocados. In Ancient China, rice was the staple crop in the south and"
"Planter class The planter class, known alternatively in the United States as the Southern aristocracy, was a socio-economic caste of Pan-American society that dominated seventeenth- and eighteenth-century agricultural markets through the forced labor of enslaved Africans. The Atlantic slave trade permitted planters access to inexpensive labor for the planting and harvesting of crops such as cotton, coffee, tea, cocoa, sugar cane, sisal, oil seeds, oil palms, rubber trees, and fruits. In the American South, planters maintained a distinct culture characterized by its similarity to the manners and customs of European nobility with an emphasis on chivalry, gentility, and hospitality, the"
"hunting) or from their masters or neighbors. Unlike meat, vegetables such as turnips, cabbage and peas were abundant for slaves. African slaves' location in the American South had a lasting influence on Southern cuisine. Africans brought with them dishes such as gumbo, and foods including okra, black-eyed peas, collards, yams, and melons, to the Southern United States, specifically Louisiana and South Carolina. The frontier economy was based on hunting and foraging. Early setters of the frontier depended highly on wild buffalo and black bears, relying on smoking jerky to preserve the meat. Frontiersmen, unlike the rest of the antebellum United"
"extremely strong today and an essential addition to the Southern table. Crops like okra, sorghum, sesame seeds, eggplant, and many different kinds of melons were brought with them from West Africa along with the incredibly important introduction of rice to the Carolinas and later to Texas and Louisiana, whence it became a staple grain of the region and still remains a staple today, found in dishes like Hoppin John, purloo, and Charleston red rice. Like the poorer indentured servants that came to the South, slaves often got the leftovers of what was slaughtered for the consumption of the master of"
"been grown in the Southwest was a popcorn variety with a cob only about one or two inches long. It was not a very productive crop. More productive varieties were developed by Southwestern farmers or introduced from Mesoamerica. Beans and squash were also introduced from Mesoamerica, although the drought-resistant Tepary bean was native. Cotton, presumably cultivated, is found at archaeological sites dating about 1200 BC in the Tucson basin and evidence of tobacco use, and possibly cultivation, occurs at about the same time. Agave, especially Agave murpheyi, was a major food source of the Hohokam and was grown on dry"
"major crops: rice and indigo (see below), both of which relied on slave labor for their cultivation. Exports of these crops led South Carolina to become one of the wealthiest colonies prior to the Revolution. Near the beginning of the 18th century, planters began rice culture along the coast, mainly in the Georgetown and Charleston areas. The rice became known as Carolina Gold, both for its color and its ability to produce great fortunes for plantation owners. In the 1740s, Eliza Lucas Pinckney began indigo culture and processing in coastal South Carolina. Indigo was in heavy demand in Europe for"
"1860, black slave labor from the American South was providing two-thirds of the world’s supply of cotton, and up to 80% of the crucial British market. The cotton gin thus “transformed cotton as a crop and the American South into the globe's first agricultural powerhouse"". Because of its inadvertent effect on American slavery, and on its ensuring that the South's economy developed in the direction of plantation-based agriculture (while encouraging the growth of the textile industry elsewhere, such as in the North), the invention of the cotton gin is frequently cited as one of the indirect causes of the American"
"peas from England but their most important crop was Indian corn (maize) which they were shown how to cultivate by the native Squanto. To fertilize this crop, they used small fish which they called herrings or shads. Plantation agriculture, using slaves, developed in Virginia and Maryland (where tobacco was grown), and South Carolina (where indigo and rice was grown). Cotton became a major plantation crop after 1800 in the ""Black Belt,"" that is the region from North Carolina in an arc through Texas where the climate allowed for cotton cultivation. The ""Black Belt"" was originally named after the black soil;"
"became attractive, and there arose an abundant supply of labor to fuel the industrial boom. As a result of the misallocation of labor in the South, the system ""hindered all diversification in southern industry, and kept the whole community in a state of commercial dependence upon the North."" Antebellum South The Antebellum era was a period in the history of the Southern United States, from the late 18th century until the start of the American Civil War in 1861, marked by the economic growth of the South. The plantation-era South saw large expansions in agriculture while manufacturing growth remained relatively"