The Story of America: When the South Became the South [Ep. 25]

On this episode of Our American Stories, in our 25th episode of our ongoing Story of Us—Story of America series, Dr. Bill McClay, author of Land of Hope, answers a simple question: When did the South become the South? The answer lies in the rise of King Cotton, the expansion of slavery, and the transformation of an entire region. As cotton made the South the wealthiest part of the young nation, it also bound its economy, culture, and politics ever more tightly to slavery.

McClay shares the story of how the South's growing dependence on slavery put it on a tragic collision course with the ideals of the American founding, making political compromise increasingly impossible and the coming of the Civil War ever more likely.

Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)

Support the show: https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 climate. The Southern

(01:04):
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

(01:25):
economy of the South, Cotton. 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

(01:46):
not evenly distributed. It was highly concentrated in those planters
for whose benefit the wealth was generated. But that wealth
was entirely dependent on cotton, on cotton being king, as
James had Reh Hammel said, and on the price of
cotton at any given moment. This crop cotton had some

(02:08):
unique attitudes. You needed massive tracts 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

(02:33):
chattel slavery, these things were uniquely 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,

(02:54):
more self contained, and much less densely populated, as befits
its agricultural character. This was something that Southerners adopted as
part of their identity, the rural, non urban character of
Southern life. The South was also acutely aware that the

(03:17):
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 rest of the country, and so the.

Speaker 3 (03:38):
South becomes distinctive.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
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
slavery in the South increased and increased, and along with
it came a defensiveness. Slavery went from being something that

(04:08):
was an adventitious convenience to something that was necessary, something
not merely a necessary evil, but a positive good. Southerners
began to defend slavery, or is the Southerners like to
call it their peculiar institution. The word peculiar, it maybe

(04:32):
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.
What's more remarkable, perhaps, is this deepening resolved to defend

(04:52):
the peculiar institution. Happened despite the fact that even at
its height, only a small f of whites were owners
of slaves, and most owned very small numbers of slaves.
Those farmers they couldn't afford the rich, low lying fields
ideal for mass scale cotton farming, and they were not

(05:16):
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
exercised tremendous influence in the South. They set the tone

(05:37):
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,
and with all that such a society entails, including a

(06:00):
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.
It's very difficult for new individuals to break into that

(06:22):
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, that they were bound together as

(06:44):
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. This vision of society, this

(07:09):
notion of the great shain 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 with the notion of monarchy,

(07:31):
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. But that it said, all

(07:53):
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

(08:15):
with that. And when the 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

(08:37):
war to protect it, and in the end brought the
South into what would turn out to be its ruin,
the sheer hubers and arrogance of the planner class, and
the planner class its own world blindness when it came
to slavery. The dehumanizing effects of slavery would set the

(08:59):
South on a moral collition 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. So the Southers had brought

(09:21):
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 and deed.

Speaker 1 (09:40):
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 to

(10:10):
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 that

(10:31):
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.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Now. 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,

(11:04):
so rooted, 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

(11:25):
could never have predicted. And isn't that the nature of
all tragedy. It's also important here to talk about slavery
in specific details, a life of tragedy and despair, the
life of the slave. Even an institution like marriage itself,

(11:48):
was always 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. Terrifying.

(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,

(12:36):
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):
oppressive 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

(14:08):
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

(14:29):
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

(14:53):
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. There were cries of

(15:14):
the 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.

(15:34):
Harriet Tubman would use Go Down Moses as a signal
clarion called the slaves who were thinking about fleeing their bondage.

Speaker 3 (15:43):
It was like a code.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
This is not in any way to diminish the horror
and suffering that the slaves endured in their life of enslavement.
Eyeing 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,

(16:13):
even under what were deplorable conditions and what to most
people 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,

(16:35):
the chances were next to nil, very few, very far between,
and those who didn't run that risk risk losing their lives. It,
of course, didn't stop them from trying the sheer courage
and ingenuity of the underground railroad that would save the

(16:56):
lives of many former slaves. Yeah, there were a few
slave rebellions and one, Nat Turner's rebellion in Virginia in
eighteen 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

(17:19):
and a religious zealot who was driven by prophetic visions.
Turner was the leader who led what he thought was
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,

(17:43):
the crew had murdered and butchered some sixty white people,
only to be subdued by a white militia, and the
state would go on to execute fifty six of Turner's men,
and eventually Turner himself. Nat Turner Rebellion changed the climate
profound in the South, not the physical climate, the cultural climate.

(18:04):
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 publication Deliberator had
been published in eighteen thirty one, and it featured an
appeal to white Christians to put an end to slavery
immediately and once and for all. It resonated in the North,

(18:27):
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 (18:44):
And you've been listening to Professor Bill McLay 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.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
And we were.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
Learning here that slavery came to define the South in
ways even Southerners themselves could not predict. They were as
much bound 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

(19:16):
sin of our country. Here on our American stories, and

(19:38):
we returned to our American stories, and the final portion
of our story on the Tragedy of the South with
Professor Bill McLay is 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

(20:00):
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 also
slavery at some point ending, and there was no defense
to the institution on moral grounds either. Indeed, a proposition

(21:18):
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 vote

(21:41):
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's presence.

(22:01):
Other Southern states followed suit. The peculiar institution just plunged forward,
more closed than ever, and just as brutal as ever.
Some attributed the hardening of the laws and the growing
restrictions and control on slaves to the Naturner rebellion. That

(22:26):
revolt had forever discredited the myth that 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

(22:46):
an unapologetically pro slavery narrative was the response at this time,
not a weakening of commitment to slavery, but an intensifying
of that commitment. Some even went so far as they
called the slave society and improvement over what they called
the wage slavery of the North, places where rapacious and

(23:09):
greedy capitalists exploited their workers and treated 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

(23:33):
Failure of Free Society. The chief and far most important
inquiry is how does slavery affect the condition of the slave.
One of the wildest sects of communists in France proposes

(23:55):
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 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

(24:19):
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 of communism. Great
wealth brings many additional cares, but few additional enjoyments. Our

(24:40):
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 the
new cares it brings along with it. There is no rivalry,
no competition to get employment among slaves as among free labors,

(25:04):
nor is there a war between master and slave. The
master's interests prevents his reducing the slaves allowance our wages
in infancy and sickness, for he might lose the slave
by so doing. His feeling for his slave never permits
him to stint him in old age. The slaves are
all well fed, well clad, have plenty of fuel, and

(25:24):
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 of competition ceases
and peace, amity, and good will arise. The institution of

(25:49):
slavery gives full development and full play to the affections.
Free society chills, stins and eradicates them in a homely way.
The farm will support all, and 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,

(26:14):
and better neighbors than our northern brethren. At the slave
holding south, all is peace, quiet, plenty, 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

(26:36):
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 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

(27:00):
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 crippled children. Secondly, that slavery
protects the weaker members of society just as do the
relations of parent, guardian, and husband, and is as necessary,

(27:24):
as natural, and almost as universal as those relations. Is
our demonstration imperfect does universal experience 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

(27:48):
liberty and equality with the old order of things, which
always partook more or less of the character of domestic slavery. Wow.
Now did anyone buy these arguments? Surely in the North,
not many did.

Speaker 3 (28:07):
What about the South?

Speaker 2 (28:09):
Well, in the end, we really don't know. It's very
difficult to know, if possible to know. 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,

(28:33):
echoed this line increasingly in his oratory. 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

(28:54):
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 like it
had disappeared, that open and frank discussion about what was
wrong with slavery had been brought to an end abruptly.

(29:17):
It now had become impossible to do anything but defend
the institution of slavery. If one was living 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. And what a story Professor McLay tells here,

(30:04):
what a tragic story, the tragedy of the South.

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