Boustan found that folks at the 90th percentile were about 14 times as wealthy as a typical white household. Enslaved workers leaving the fields with baskets of cotton. The Southern economy and farms had been destroyed during the Civil War. By the start of the 19th century, slavery and cotton had become essential to the continued growth of America’s economy. Also its financial system was wreaked, its confederate money useless, and many debts left unpaid. These open markets where humans were inspected like animals and bought and sold to the highest bidder proved an increasingly lucrative enterprise. Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. One of the most effective data points for doing so was surnames. Their ancestors fled U.S. slavery for Mexico. However, the Southern economy received a large blow with a loss of cotton and other agricultural exports to the North. For much of the 1600s, the American colonies operated as agricultural economies, driven largely by indentured servitude. No one seriously doubts that the enormous economic stake the South had in its slave labor force was a major factor in the sectional disputes that erupted in the middle of the nineteenth century. About 1 in 200 owned 50 or more enslaved people. In time, the paper money lost 90 percent of its buying power. Now theyâre looking north again. The Southern economy during during Reconstruction was in very bad shape because of the Civil War. (Credit: MPI/Getty Images). Itâs not as straightforward as going from plantations built on slavery to plantations built on sharecropping. The economic lives of planters, former slaves, and nonslaveholding whites, were transformed after the Civil War. It probably wasnât just white privilege or that these wealthy lineages thrived based solely on their intelligence, talent or entrepreneurial instinct. The war had had many negative effects on the Southern economy. Reconstruction After the Civil War. 2. limited major crops were planted: cotton, tobacco, and sugar. The more cotton processed, the more that could be exported to the mills of Great Britain and New England. There was an irony in all this. As the number of European laborers coming to the colonies dwindled, enslaving Africans became a commercial necessity—and more widely acceptable. As a result, enslaved people became a legal form of property that could be used as collateral in business transactions or to pay off outstanding debt. The benefits of cotton produced by enslaved workers extended to industries beyond the South. The typical American white family had 10 times as much wealth as the typical black one as of 2016, the most recent year of available data from the Federal Reserveâs Survey of Consumer Finances. But by 1880, the sons of slave owners were back atop the Southern socioeconomic hierarchy. The southern agrarian economy relied largely on free labor for its capital before the Civil War. And the invention of the cotton gin coincided with other developments that opened up large-scale global trade: Cargo ships were built bigger, better and easier to navigate. These farmers were self-made and fiercely independent. Figure 1 plots the total value of all slaves in the United States from 1805 to 1860. Building a commercial enterprise out of the wilderness required labor and lots of it. United States - United States - Reconstruction and the New South, 1865–1900: The original Northern objective in the Civil War was the preservation of the Union—a war aim with which virtually everybody in the free states agreed. More than 1 in 5 white households owned slaves. First, northern states benefited from pension dollars at the expense of southern states. Manually, one enslaved person could pick the seeds out of 10 pounds of cotton in a day. No matter how wide the gap between rich and poor, class tensions among whites were eased by the belief they all belonged to the “superior race.” Many convinced themselves they were actually doing God’s work taking care of what they believed was an inferior people. The cotton gin, which Whitney patented in 1794, could process 100 pounds in the same time. With all these factors amping up production and distribution, the South was poised to expand its cotton-based economy. FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. Most workers were poor, unemployed laborers from Europe who, like others, had traveled to North America for a new life. The Southern part of the united states. General William T. Sherman , an acute observer of the war, had predicted this development even before Sumter, telling a rebel acquaintance in late 1860: The time: Spring 1865, at the end of the Civil War The place: The American South The problems: Destruction, hunger, lawlessness and violence More than a million African Americans were refugees, homeless, separated from family during years of slavery, wondering what to do now. 3. However, by 1820, political and economic pressure on the South placed a wedge between the North and South. The Confederate currency was inherently weak and became weaker with each printing. As more enslaved Africans were imported and an upsurge in fertility rates expanded the “inventory,” a new industry was born: the slave auction. When the topic of slavery arose during the deliberations over calculating political representation in Congress, the southern states of Georgia and the Carolinas demanded that each enslaved person be counted along with whites. Their techniques can seem complex, but in the end, Boustan said, their work is guided by, and consistent with, the findings of historians who specialize in the fate of the Southâs white aristocracy. Farms and plantations were in disarray and often ruin. The implements of work were the same as before the war, but relations between planters, laborers, and merchants had changed forever. With collaborators such as Stanford Universityâs Ran Abramitzky, she uses advanced analytical techniques to uncover people and trends in the wild and woolly data sets of the 19th and early 20th centuries. A thread summarizing Boustanâs findings has spread far and wide on Twitter, where her enthusiasm, good humor and emoji exemplify a new breed of academics who switch fluently between the language of professional and popular audiences. But when they arrived home, th… The northern states balked, saying it gave southern states an unfair advantage. Other industry was believed to be unneeded. Norway was once the kind of country Trump mightâve spit on. Southern Economy During The Civil War. Yes, some fell behind economically in the warâs aftermath. In the 120 years that followed, they consistently saw lower pay and less upward mobility than similar white men, according to a separate 2017 working paper by economists Marianne Wanamaker of the University of Tennessee and William Collins of Vanderbilt University. As a Union victory became more of certainty, America’s struggle … Powerful navies protected them against piracy. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! And newly invented steam engines powered these ships, as well as looms and weaving machines, which increased the capacity to produce cotton cloth. Delegates agreed that each enslaved person would count as three-fifths of a person, giving the South more representation, and that the slave trade would be banned 20 years hence, in 1807, a concession to Northern states that had abolished slavery several years earlier. In 1794, inventor Eli Whitney devised a machine that combed the cotton bolls free of their seeds in very short order. Enslaved people comprised a sizable portion of a planter’s property holdings, becoming a source of tax revenue for state and local governments. The southern slave economy permitted a small number of wealthy planters to accumulate extraordinary fortunes. These white families seem to have drawn upon exceptional social connections, the economists find. In 1870, at the height of Reconstruction, former slave-owning families had about 15 percent less wealth than equivalent families who owned fewer people. Slaves on an American plantation operating a cotton gin. That kept sectional tensions high. The economists help confirm this by analyzing the swath of destruction left by Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. The slave-driven Southern economy rested upon the export of commodities to Britain and the rest of Europe—primarily cotton but also tobacco and other foodstuffs—while the North was an emerging industrial power whose ambition was to displace these same established powers. In many cases, itâs a perfect match. Their plantations spanned upward of a thousand acres, controlling hundreds—and, in some cases, thousands—of enslaved people. The last survivor of a slave ship has been identified, and her story is remarkable. In the conflict’s waning days, it is believed that Confederate officials stashed away millions of dollars’ worth of gold, most in Richmond, Virginia. Their fuel of choice? In 1805 there were just over one million slaves worth about $300 million; fifty-five years later there were four million slaves worth close to $3 billion. By the mid-19th century, a skilled, able-bodied enslaved person could fetch up to $2,000, although prices varied by the state. Yet, the booming cotton economy most Southerners were optimistic about their future. Fifteen years, a couple of jobs and three children later, the final analysis was circulated this week as a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. Tariff taxes were passed to help Northern businesses fend off foreign competition but hurt Southern consumers. A sort of sales tax was also levied on enslaved worker transactions. Throughout the war the Southern economy continued to agricultural based. Without factories, the South often lacked in arms, ammunition, and warfare needed in order to fight. In the rest of the country, 45,000 miles were laid. VIDEO: The System of American Slavery – Historians and experts examine the American system of racialized slavery and the hypocrisy it relied on to function. By the start of the war, the South was producing 75 percent of the world’s cotton and creating more millionaires per capita in the Mississippi River valley than anywhere in the nation. By the end of the century, Britain was importing more than 20 million pounds of tobacco per year. During this time, slavery had become a morally, legally and socially acceptable institution in the colonies. … In 1859 and 1860, southern planters were flush with prosperity after producing record cotton crops–America’s most valuable export at the time. Slave auction circa 1861. To meet the need, wealthy planters turned to traders, who imported ever more human chattel to the colonies, the vast majority from West Africa. Below the elite class were the small planters who owned a handful of enslaved people. The gulf in economic status between slave and owner is incalculably large, and slave ownership was widespread. King Cotton was a phrase coined in the years before the Civil War to refer to the economy of the American South. With cash crops of tobacco, cotton and sugar cane, America’s southern states became the economic engine of the burgeoning nation. © 2021 A&E Television Networks, LLC. To follow families across generations and data sets, Boustan, Eriksson and Ager used first names, last names, ages and birthplaces. Chapter 15: The South After the Civil War The Economy of the South After the Civil War Three reasons the economy of the South was not very strong before the Civil War 1. After the invention of the cotton gin (1793), cotton surpassed tobacco as the dominant cash crop in the agricultural economy of the South, soon comprising more than half the total U.S. exports. The survivors straggled home, many of them wounded. The Southern Economy still remained agricultural based after the civil war, but it had challenges transitioning to paid from slave labor. But by 1880, the sons of slave owners were better off than the sons of nearby Southern whites who started with equal wealth but were not as invested in enslaved people. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. âYet, even in this extreme case, we find that elite sons completely caught up with or even surpassed the sons of comparably wealthy families in neighboring counties,â Boustan, Eriksson and Ager write. In the North and Great Britain, cotton mills hummed, while the financial and shipping industries also saw gains. The end of the Civil War was accompanied by a large migration of new freed people to the cities. Presumably, any attributes linked to economic success would be shared by all wealthy white households in the area. And thatâs just the beginning. Enslaved people returning from the cotton fields in South Carolina, circa 1860. Boustan and her colleagues analyzed sociological indicators such as birth year and name choice to demonstrate that sons of slave owners tended to marry women from families with even more prewar wealth â probably at least in part because of their father-in-lawâs network and influence. The Post-Civil War Economy in the South By Thomas D. Clark* The Confederate soldier straggling home after Lee's surrender at Appomattox came home to ruin, Many Southern towns and all of the railroads were laid waste by the invading Union Army. Second, Republicans “waved the bloody shirt” and blamed Democrats for the war.
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