The Story of America: The Tragedy of King Cotton

On this episode of Our American Stories, in our 25th Episode of The Story of America Series, Dr. Bill McClay tells the story of how the South became beholden to a system that brought massive wealth to a select few and enormous suffering to many others.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we return to our American stories. Up next another
installment of our series about Us, the Story of America series,
with Hillsdale College professor and author of Land of Hope
Bill McLay. The North and South have always been different.
Bill tells the story of how that divide, how those
differences came to be. Let's get into the story. Take

(00:34):
it away, Bill.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
The South is different. We all know that, But at
what point in American history did the South become the South? Well,
there are definitely certain factors that we have to consider.
The most important of these probably is its climate. The

(01:03):
Southern climate is warm, humid, subtropical in places, and because
of the climate, the South has a nearly year round
growing season, a perfect place for the cultivation of certain
kinds of crops, rice, sugar, tobacco, and one crop more
than any other crop, drove the economy of the South, Cotton.

(01:30):
King cotton, as it was known, accounted for two thirds
of all American exports. All American exports two thirds. The
South was extremely wealthy. It was the wealthiest region in
the country, but that wealth was not evenly distributed. It
was highly concentrated in those planters for whose benefit the

(01:53):
wealth was generated, but that wealth was entirely dependent on cotton,
on cotton being king, as James Henry Hammond said, and
on the price of cotton at any given moment. This
crop cotton had some unique attitudes. You needed massive tracts

(02:15):
of land, a massive labor force, and a cheap labor force.
Because a massive labor force couldn't be too expensive, you
expected to make money. The South's plantation system and the
labor system of slavery channel slavery. These things were uniquely

(02:37):
equipped to get the job done and would ultimately drive
the uniqueness and distinctiveness of Southern life. It should be
noted too, that the South was more insular than its
northern counterpart, more withdrawn, more self contained, and much less

(02:57):
densely populated, as befits its agricultural character. This was something
that Southerners adopted as part of their identity, the rural,
non urban character.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
Of Southern life.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
The South was also acutely aware that the massive immigration
flows from Germany and Ireland in the eighteen forties were
almost all occurring in the north, so the South was
gradually going to find less and less representation, at least
in the lower House of Congress. House of representatives because
its population wasn't increasing it's the same rate as the

(03:36):
rest of the country, and so the South becomes distinctive. Tragically,
as King Cotton continued to dominate the region's economic life,
as the fabulous wealth continued to grow, as the power
of those sections of the country grew, the reliance on

(03:58):
slavery in the South increased and increased, and along with
it came a defensiveness. Slavery went from being something that
was an adventitious convenience to something that was necessary, something
not merely a necessary evil, but a positive good. Southerners

(04:23):
began to defend slavery, or is the Southerners like to
call it their peculiar institution. The word peculiar, it maybe
has a connotation of weird. That isn't what they meant
by it. They meant it is something that is particular
to us. But it was peculiar in a nation that
was dedicated to the idea that all men are created equal.

(04:45):
What's more remarkable, perhaps, is this deepening resolved to defend
the peculiar institution. Happened despite the fact that even at
its height, only a small friend of whites were owners
of slaves and most owned very small numbers of slaves.

(05:07):
Those farmers they couldn't afford the rich, low lying fields
ideal for mass scale cotton farming, and they were not
capable of funding such operations. In short, most of the
white farmers were subsistence farmers. They grew enough to live
from day to day, to survive, maybe have a small
surplus for market. And yet somehow the large plantation owners

(05:33):
exercised tremendous influence in the South. They set the tone
for the South, and white sharecropping families hoped that they
too might grow or scale their farms and yes, own
slaves themselves. It was a semi feudal type of society
in the end, dominated by a small aristocratic planter class,

(05:56):
and with all that such a society entails, including a
social order that prevails in such societies. This is an
order in which the landholders are at the top. They
passed the property on to subsequent generations in their family.

Speaker 3 (06:17):
It's very difficult.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
For new individuals to break into that sacred circle or
to rise outside of their standing. It was a vision
that really stemmed from the idea of the great chain
of being, the notion that there was a linkage between
all of the different orders and statuses and classes of society,

(06:41):
that they were bound together as one in a hierarchy,
in an order that was not one of equality, but
was one of mutual dependence, in which an aristocratic class
at the top lorded it over those beneath it and
gained most of the wealth and almost all of the power.

(07:07):
This vision of society, this notion of the great chain
of being, was in direct contradiction to the foundational ideals
of the American Republic, the view that all men are
created equal under God, they have the capacity to govern themselves.
This is a kind of society that didn't comport well

(07:29):
with the notion of monarchy, with the notion of an
aristocratically dominant class. Instead, it was the society that looked
to the free individual and free enterprise, to the notion
that no one was condemned to live out their lives
in the condition of their birth to the things their
father did, live on the land their father toiled on.

(07:52):
But that it said, all Americans had the ability to
improve their lives and rise in the world and pass
on to their families a level of wealth and stability
that they had not been able to enjoy. Themselves as
young people. There's nothing more American than that, and the
Southern vision was in conflict with that. And when the

(08:16):
culture of society is different, when it diverges from the
culture of the whole, that makes political unity and political
compromise very very difficult, nearly impossible. And yet Southerners clung
to this institution. They fought a war to protect it,

(08:40):
and in the end brought the South into what would
turn out to be its ruin. The sheer hubris and
arrogance of the planner class, and the planner class it's
own world blindness when it came to slavery. The dehumanizing
effects of slavery would set this out on a moral

(09:00):
coalition course with the founding ideals of America itself. Mark
Twain used to half jokingly and half seriously say that
the South went astray by becoming addicted to the feudal
tales of Sir Walter Scott. Ivan Hoe was like a Bible.

(09:20):
So the others had brought into a kind of myth,
a myth of what feudal life was like, and that
they could inhabit that same sort of universe imaginatively but
also in reality. A great, great tragedy.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
Indeed, and you've been listening to Professor Bill McLay tell
the story the tragedy of the South and how the
Civil War well in the end, was almost inevitable. When
we come back more of the story the tragedy of
the South here on our American stories, and we returned

(10:10):
to our American stories and the story of the tragedy
of the South and the tragedy of slavery. When we
last left off, Doctor Bill McLay told us about how
the South had fashioned itself in the style of a
feudal society and became beholden to the price of cotton
rather than the country's founding principles. Mark Twain would say

(10:31):
that the South went to stray when they took the
tales of Ivanhoe to be gospel.

Speaker 3 (10:36):
Let's return to the story now.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Whether this was a fanciful statement on Twain's part or not,
it's hard to say, but he put his finger on
something important. That the South was diverging culturally from the North.
The tragic reality was that slavery was deeply woven to
the society and cultural life of the South, so rooted,

(11:05):
so firmly planted, socially culturally, psychologically, in addition to economically
so planted, it was hard to see any point that
slavery could plausibly be abolished. It had come to define
the region in ways that even Southerners themselves could never

(11:26):
have predicted. And isn't that the nature of all tragedy.
It's also important here to talk about slavery in specific details.
It's a life of tragedy and despair, the life of
the slave. Even an institution like marriage itself was always

(11:49):
in peril because a slave owner could sell a husband
and wife down the river so to speak to another
slaveholder anytime it suited his bank account, and thus destroy
a family in a single, unaccountable transaction.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
Terrifying.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
It's a hard, cruel, cold fact that slavery has been
ubiquitous throughout human history. Those societies that have forbidden it
are very few and far between in the vast sweep
of the history of the world. It also slavery had
been practiced in all of the colonies during the colonial period,

(12:35):
all of the colonies, not just South Carolina and Virginia.
It's surprising how many of the founders, even some of
those from the North, like Benjamin Franklin, had slaves. It
was in the deep South Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia where
you'd find the worst practices, the most strict, the most

(13:00):
disciplinary practices. Although you also found, and this is less
paradoxical than they seemed, the most rich expressions of an
African American cultural sensibility. Because these were like slave cities,
they could share the cultural vestiges of their African past,

(13:22):
and many of these slaves were attracted eventually to an
African Christian sort of melding. The attraction to Christianity was
very powerful. They saw, without having to be coaxed into it,
that the stories of the Bible spoke to them. They
could see their condition and their hopes, and their miseries

(13:45):
and their longings in the stories. For example, the Israelites
enslaved in Egypt and making their exodus to the Promised Land.
That was a metaphor. They too yearned for freedom. They
yearned for a promised land. In this case, the promised
land would be Canada, because even if they made it

(14:07):
to the north, there was a fugitive slave law. But
they also saw their condition their hopes in the person
of Jesus. Jesus was in a worldly way, powerless, humble,
bore the pains, bore the stripes of whipping. He bore

(14:28):
these things and yet triumphed over them. So the example
of Christ gave the slaves great hope, and therefore they
bounded to their hearts. What Christianity inspired was what it
had inspired for centuries before, the notion that the soul
can be free even when the body is bound. They

(14:52):
needed this because the forces against them were monumental. It
was a beacon of hope to them, out of which
sprang some of the most memorable songs in our tradition,
what we call spirituals sorrow songs, which gives you a
sense of what they were like.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
There were cries of the.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
Heart, moans of aching wounded hearts. There are also songs
of great joy, of exuberance, of ecstatic happiness, songs about
the possibility of deliverance from their woe, deliverance from these
lives of bondage, a song like go Down Moses. Harriet

(15:34):
Tubman would use Go Down Moses as a signal clarion
called the slaves who were thinking about fleeing their bondage.
It was like a code. This is not in any
way to diminish the horror and suffering that the slaves

(15:55):
endured in their life of enslavement. It's to remind the
world of the heroism and resilience the enslaved peoples showed
their ability, partly with the help of their religion, to
guard their inner lives and their hearts and souls, even
under what were deplorable conditions and what to most people

(16:20):
would seem sheer hopelessness, a condition that they had no
prospect of overcoming. And there was some resistance too in
more practical ways by slaves, but as for escape, the
chances were next to nil, very few, very far between,
and those who didn't run that risk risk losing their lives. It,

(16:45):
of course didn't stop them from trying. The sheer courage
and ingenuity of the underground railroad that would save the
lives of many former slaves, and there were few slave
rebellions and one. Nat Turner's rebellion in Virginia in eighteen

(17:05):
thirty one was the worst and bloodiest in American history
and would have grave consequences. Turner was a black overseer,
which is a somewhat more elevated rank in the plantation,
and a religious zealot who was driven by prophetic visions.
Turner was the leader who led what he thought was

(17:26):
in a mission ordained by God. Along with seventy armed
slaves and pre blacks. He attempted to kill as many
white slave owning neighbors of his as his small army
could kill, starting with Turner's master and wife. Within a day,
the crew had murdered and butchered some sixty white people,
only to be subdued by a white militia, and the

(17:49):
state would go on to execute fifty six of Turner's
men and eventually Turner himself. The Nat Turner Rebellion changed
the climate profoundly in this South, not the physical climate,
the cultural climate. A divide had been crossed. This rebellion
happened at a time when the abolition movement in the
North was just beginning to gather steam. William Lloyd Garrison's

(18:13):
publication The Liberator had been published in eighteen thirty one.
It featured an appeal to white Christians to put an
end to slavery immediately and once and for all. It
resonated in the North, but also resonated in the South,
where Christianity was the dominant religion. Of the day too,
and the residence was a fearful one in the southern precincts.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
And you've been listening to Professor Bill maclay, who teaches
history at Hillsdale College. All of our history stories here
and our American stories are brought to us by the
great folks at Hillsdale College. And we were learning here
that slavery came to define the South in ways even
Southerners themselves could not predict. They were as much bound

(19:03):
by slavery as the slaves themselves. When we come back
more of the story of the South, the tragedy of
the South, the tragedy of slavery, the original sin of
our country. Here on our American Stories. And we returned

(19:39):
to our American stories and the final portion of our
story on the Tragedy of the South with Professor Bill
McLay as part of our Story of America series. This
is the twenty fifth installment. When we last left off,
Bill was telling us about what exactly a life of
slavery was like and about a failed rebellion led by

(20:01):
Nat Turner that would have drastic effects for years to come.

Speaker 3 (20:05):
Let's return to the story.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
In of all places of Virginia, General Assembly. In the
eighteen thirty one to thirty two session, there were serious
debates about the future of the South's peculiar institution. It
may have been the South's only real open debate about
slavery and its future. Virginia was in many ways the

(20:31):
capital state of the South and would go on to
be the capital of the Confederacy, and at the time
of secession a lot hinged on whether or not Virginia
would succeed, so Virginia has a leadership role. At this
time there was a debate in the General Assembly about slavery.
There were some who actually called for straight up abolition

(20:55):
and emancipation. Shockingly, no one argued for slavery as a permanent,
enduring institution with no end in sight. Perpetual slavery al
saw slavery at some point ending, and there was no
defense to the institution on moral grounds either. Indeed, a

(21:17):
proposition called slavery and Evil. After much debate, a plan
for gradual emancipation was voted down by account of seventy
three to fifty eight, which is really surprisingly close when
you think about it, a plan for ending the institution
seventy three to fifty eight, but it was a negative

(21:40):
vote in terms of abolition, and that vote would in
the end doom any prospect of slavery coming to any
kind of peaceable or orderly end. That same Assembly would
go on to make it illegal to educate slaves or
to hold any kind of religious services without a white
man presence. Other Southern states followed suit. The peculiar institution

(22:06):
just plunged forward, more closed than ever and just as
brutal as a Some attributed the hardening of the laws
and the growing restrictions and control on slaves to the
Naturner rebellion. That revolt had forever discredited the myth that

(22:29):
there was a harmony between slaves and their masters, a
myth that only the slave owners themselves could conjure and
believe in, and needed to believe in. Indeed, if anything,
the rise of an unapologetically pro slavery narrative was the

(22:50):
response at this time, not a weakening of commitment to slavery,
but an intensifying of that commitment. Some even went so
far as to call the slave society and improvement over
what they called the wage slavery of the North, places
where rapacious and greedy capitalists exploited their workers and treated

(23:13):
them even worse than any plantation owner could imagine. George Fitzhugh,
an influential pro slavery writer from Virginia, was a fierce
proponent of this view. Here's just a few of his
words from a tract he called Sociology for the South,
or the Failure of Free Society. The chief and far

(23:45):
most important inquiry is how does slavery affect the condition
of the slave. One of the wildest sects of communists
in France proposes not only to hold all property in common,
but to divide the not according to each man's input
in labor, but according to each man's wants. Now this

(24:07):
is precisely the system of domestic slavery. With us. We
provide for each slave in old age and in infancy,
in sickness and in health, not according to his labor,
but according to his wants. The master's wants are costlier
and more refined, and he therefore gets a larger share
of the profits. A Southern farm is the Beau ideal

(24:32):
of communism. Great wealth brings many additional cares, but few
additional enjoyments. Our stomachs do not increase in capacity with
our fortunes. We want no more clothing to keep us warm.
We may create new wants, but we cannot create new pleasures.
The intellectual enjoyments which wealth affords are probably balanced by

(24:54):
the new cares it brings along with it. There is
no rivalry, no competition to get employment among slaves as
among free labors, nor is there a war between master
and slave. The master's interests prevents his reducing the slaves
allowance or wages in infancy and sickness, for he might
lose the slave by so doing. His feeling for his

(25:16):
slave never permits him to stint him in old age.
The slaves are all well fed, well clad, have plenty
of fuel, and are happy. They have no dread of
the future, no fear of want. A state of dependence
is the only condition in which reciprocal affection can exist
among human beings, the only situation in which the war

(25:38):
of competition ceases and peace, amity, and good will arise.
The institution of slavery gives full development and full play
to the affections. Free society chills stints and eradicates them
in a homely way. The farm will support all, and

(26:02):
we are not in a hurry to send our children
into the world to push their way and make their futures.
With a capital of knavish maxims. We are better husbands,
better farmers, better friends, and better neighbors than our northern brethren.
At the slave holding south, all is peace, quiet, plenty,

(26:23):
and contentment. We have no mobs, no trade unions, no
strikes for higher wages, no armed resistance to the law.
But little jealousy of the rich by the poor. We
have but few in our jails and fewer in our
poor houses. We produce enough of the comforts and necessaries
of life for a population three or four times as

(26:47):
numerous as ours. In conclusion, we will repeat the propositions
in somewhat different phraseology with which we set out. First,
that liberty and equality, with their concomitant free competition, beget
a war in society that is as destructive to its
weaker members as the custom of exposing the deformed and

(27:11):
crippled children. Secondly, that slavery protects the weaker members of
society just as do the relations of parent, guardian, and husband.
And is this necessary as natural and almost as universal
as those relations. Is our demonstration imperfect. Does universal experience

(27:33):
sustain our theory? Should the conclusions to which we have
arrived appear strange and startling. Let them therefore not be
rejected without examination. The world has had but little opportunity
to contrast the working of liberty and equality with the
old order of things, which always partook more or less

(27:54):
of the character of domestic slavery. Wow. Now did anyone
buy these arguments? Surely in the North, not many did.
What about the South? Well, in the end, we really
don't know. It's very difficult to know, if possible to know.

(28:16):
What we do know is that the pro slavery arguments
began to replace the old necessary evil narrative within Southern
leadership circles. Leaders like John C. Calhoun of South Carolina,
a major national figure, echoed this line increasingly in his oratory.

(28:42):
With the adoption of this pro slavery narrative, the South
had essentially cut itself off from the rest of the nation.
How is any of this compatible with the ideals of
the Declaration of Independence, with the ideals undergirding the Constitution
as the Constitution had come to be an understand the
open discussion that occurred in the Virginia Assembly and anything

(29:05):
like it had disappeared that open and frank discussion about
what was wrong with slavery had been brought to an
end abruptly. It now had become impossible to do anything
but defend the institution of slavery. If one was living

(29:25):
in the South. This would soon lead to the very
worst outcome imaginable for the South and for the nation
as a whole.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Monty Montgomery himself a Hillsdale College graduate,
and a special thanks to Professor Bill McLay and his
book Land of Hope is available on Amazon and the
usual suspect, so too is the Young Reader's edition of
Land of Hope.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
And what a.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
Story Professor McLay tells here, what a tragic story, the
tragedy of the South.

Speaker 3 (30:08):
Here on our American Stories.