In Episode 11 of Star-Spangled Studies, Dr. G examines how cotton transformed the South and fueled slavery’s expansion. Key topics include:

• Eli Whitney’s cotton gin & short-staple cotton boom

• “Petite Gulf” cotton strain & steam-powered river transport

• Indian removal & the opening of the Cotton Belt

• Domestic slave trade (“Second Middle Passage”) & New Orleans markets

• Southern cities as modern commercial centers built on slavery

• Southern honor culture, duels & paternalistic pro-slavery ideology

• Enslaved resistance: family, invisible churches & daily acts of defiance

• Historiographical debate: paternalism vs. capitalist brutality

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Episode 11 of Star-Spangled Studies explores the Cotton Revolution: the gin, the Gulf cotton strain, Indian removal, the domestic slave trade, southern honor, and enslaved resistance.

Hello y'all.

2

It's me.

3

It's me.

4

It's Dr.

5

G and welcome back to Star Spank Studies.

6

Now they call this white gold and it

fueled a global economic revolution.

7

It built fortunes overnight and

it turned the American South.

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Into a kingdom, the

kingdom of king Cotton.

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But this kingdom was built on the

foundation of human bodies and the legacy

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of which would tear the nation apart.

11

This week on Star Spangled studies,

we're gonna dive into one of the most

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consequential and contradictory periods of

American history, the era of King Cotton.

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The story of the Antebellum South is

often told as one of tradition of a

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region that was stuck in the past,

insulated from the modernizing world.

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But as we will see, the south

was anything but static.

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It was a place of explosive

growth, of cutting edge

17

technology and of global ambition.

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As our textbook puts it, the

South quote, actively engage new

19

technologies and trade routes.

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It became an integral part of an

increasingly global economy end quote.

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But this modernizing capitalist impulse

was harnessed to its most traditional and

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brutal of all practices, chattel slavery.

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This is the central

paradox, will unravel today.

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This revolution of cotton

didn't happen by accident.

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It was built on three critical pillars

that together transformed the south's

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landscape and its global economy.

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So let's go.

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The first pillar was technology in 1794.

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As we talked about in a previous episode,

a Massachusetts born inventor named

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Eli Whitney patented a machine that

would quite literally change the world.

31

Cotton gin before Whitney processing

cotton was a painfully slow process.

32

A single laborer could spend an

entire day picking the sticky

33

seeds out of just one pound of

short staple cotton Whitney's gin.

34

The simple device with wired teeth that

pulled fibers through slots too narrow for

35

the seeds to go through, could clean 50

pounds or more in the same amount of time.

36

It revolutionized cotton production.

37

It made cotton production.

38

Actually a lucrative business.

39

This was a boons for the southern

economies that were starting

40

to turn away from tobacco into

the now more lucrative cotton.

41

It was immensely profitable, especially

because short staple cotton grew

42

really well in the deep south.

43

We had talked about in a previous

episode how this fueled slavery's

44

expansion in the south and the

domestic slave trade from northern.

45

Old south or old states to the deep south.

46

The second pillar was biology.

47

The gin was a brilliant machine, but

it needed the right raw material,

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and that arrived in 1820 with

the discovery of a new strain of

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cotton near Rodney, Mississippi.

50

It was.

51

Known as the Petite Gulf Cotton.

52

This was a Planter's dream.

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The fibers were long and

luxurious, but unlike other high

54

quality strains, it grew densely.

55

Its bowls opened wide for easy

picking, and most importantly,

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it seeds slid through the new

cotton gins with remarkable ease.

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This was the biological catalyst that

made the cotton revolution po possible.

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But technology and biology were

useless without the third and

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most foundational pillar land.

60

And the land for this new kingdom

was acquired through a campaign of

61

violent state-sponsored expansion.

62

The story of king cotton is inseparable

from the story of Indian removal.

63

The federal government through

legislation like the Indian Removal

64

Act of 1830, which had forcibly

displaced the Choctaw Chickasaw Creek,

65

Seminole and Cherokee nations from

their ancestral homes in the southeast.

66

Following this ethnic cleansing,

the government surveyed divided and

67

auctioned off millions of acres of

fertile land in what would become known

68

as the cotton belt Southern Georgia.

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As well as Alabama, Mississippi,

and northern Louisiana.

70

This land became, quote, readily

available for white men with

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a few dollars in big dreams.

72

End quote.

73

This process reveals a crucial

truth, often obscured in the popular

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narrative of the self-made planter.

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The rise of King Cotton was not

simply a story of market forces

76

or agricultural ingenuity.

77

It was a deliberate, violent project

underwritten by the full power

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of the United States government.

79

A federal policy of Indian removal

was essential for the first step of

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this, the precondition that cleared

the way for subsequent economic booms.

81

The wealth of King Cotton was

from its very inception rooted

82

in a partnership between private

ambition and public violence.

83

The transformation was

astonishingly rapid.

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The traveler Joseph Holt Ingram,

who visited Mississippi, captured

85

the dizzying pace of the change.

86

He recalled how, quote, where

yesterday, the wilderness darkened

87

over the land with her wild forests.

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Today, the cotton

plantations whiten the earth.

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End quote, thousands rushed into the

cotton belt, and with it the help of the

90

new steam powered riverboats to ma to

move the goods, the American South quickly

91

became the world's leading producer.

92

Cotton, but that was all

done by the labor of slaves.

93

Something we cannot forget,

millions of hands were needed

94

to do the backbreaking work.

95

And in Antebellum America, that meant the

dramatic expansion in the intensification.

96

Of the single most

controversial institution in

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the nation's history, slavery,

98

the US Constitution had banned

the international slave trade

99

starting in 1808, but this did

not end slavery within the nation.

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Instead, it gave rise to a massive and

brutal internal or domestic slave trade.

101

This forced migration of enslaved people

from the older slave stout states of the

102

upper north like Virginia and Maryland to

the new cotton lands of the deep South is

103

often called the second middle passage.

104

It was a staggering demographic upheaval.

105

Over a million enslaved African

Americans were forcibly moved, marched

106

over land in chains, or packed onto

ships bound for ports like New Orleans.

107

This journey was a second traumatic

dislocation, tearing people

108

from the communities and kinship

networks that had, they had

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managed to build over generations.

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These statistics are chilling and

historical estimates suggest that

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between one fifth and one third of all

slave marriages were broken up by sale

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or force migration during this period.

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The destination for many was the

slave market, a place of profound

114

terror in dehumanization cities

like New Orleans became the largest

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slave markets in North America.

116

Their economies boomed from

this trade in human flesh.

117

To understand what the spear

the experience was like.

118

We can turn to the powerful narrative

of Solomon Northup, a free black man

119

from New York who was kidnapped in 1841

and sold into slavery for 12 years.

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His account became 12 years

a slave, and it gives us that

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visceral first person view.

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Northup describes how potential buyers

treated him and others like him.

123

They treated him like

livestock, not as people.

124

He wrote quote, he would make us hold

up our heads, walk briskly back and

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forth while customers would feel our

hands and arms and bodies turn us about.

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Ask us what we could do.

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Make us open our mouths and show our teeth

precisely as a jockey, examines a horse,

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which he's about to barter for purchase.

129

The greatest horror was

the separation of family.

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Northup witnessed the agony of a

woman named Eliza, who was being

131

sold away from her children.

132

He recounts her desperate pleas.

133

She besought the man not to buy her

child unless he also bought herself.

134

She promised in that case to be the

most faithful slave that ever lived.

135

End quote.

136

Her pleas were ignored.

137

The system's profitability depended

on the ability to sever the

138

most fundamental of human bonds.

139

This brutal commerce was the engine

of urban growth in the South.

140

As our textbook explains, southern

cities like New Orleans, Charleston, St.

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Louis and Mobile quote, doubled

and even tripled in size and global

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importance in the antebellum decades.

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They became modern cosmopolitan centers

with global shipping lines, connecting

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them to Liverpool, New York, and Lisbon.

145

They boasted theaters and universities.

146

They had a wealthy, educated elite,

but this sophistication was built

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directly upon the slave trade itself.

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The slave pens and auction houses

were often located just blocks

149

away from fine homes, mansions,

and cultural institutions.

150

The modernity of these cities was not

in spite of slavery, but because of it,

151

the very mechanisms of modern commerce,

the trading firms, the warehouses,

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the port facilities, the financial

instruments like credit and insurance

153

were all developed and perfected to

make the buying and selling of slaves.

154

More efficient and profitable.

155

The city was the sophisticated

public face of a barbaric system,

156

a place where the profits of human

trafficking and laundering into

157

cultural and economic capital.

158

The barbarism and the.

159

Sophistication.

160

Were not just coexisting,

they were symbiotic.

161

This vast system of human trafficking,

which treated people like livestock was

162

defended by a complex and violent culture.

163

I cannot state that enough.

164

To understand the mind of the enslave,

to understand how they could attend

165

a slave auction in the morning.

166

In a church service in the afternoon,

we have to explore their worldview.

167

A world built on the violent defense

of honor in a chillingly new ideology.

168

So for the white man of the planter

class, public reputation was everything.

169

This was a culture of honor.

170

Honor was not an internal

feeling of self-worth.

171

It was a public performance of authority

and mastery over one's dependence.

172

This included mastery

over wives, children.

173

Most importantly, the enslaved people

that they claimed as property to have

174

one's word questioned to be called a liar

or a coward, was to have this mastery

175

publicly challenged such an insult demand

that a response, often a violent one,

176

culminating in the ritual of the dual.

177

Dueling had largely vanished in the

north, but it remained a central if

178

illegal part of the Southern Honor Code.

179

A fascinating example of this code

in action is the dispute between

180

two prominent South Carolinians

James Hammond and his brother-in-law

181

weighed Hampton The second.

182

Hammond had engaged in sexual

relationships with Hampton's

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four teenage daughters.

184

When Hampton found out about this, he

didn't immediately challenge Hammond to

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a dual, which was custom at the time.

186

Instead, he tried to use it

to create a scandal, trying to

187

ruin Hammond politically, but

in the eyes of their peers.

188

This was the greater dishonor by

failing to seek immediate violent

189

satisfaction to the dishonor.

190

Imposed upon him, Hampton

was seen as a coward.

191

Hammond wrote in his diary that

Hampton was a convicted bastard.

192

Those were his words, and that

Hammond himself was no longer

193

bound to the code to accept a

dual from such a dishonorable man.

194

This bizarre episode shows just

how ritualized and central this

195

culture of controlled violence

was to the southern elite.

196

This code of honor was.

197

Held up by a radical shift in

ideology in the early republic.

198

Many southerners, including Thomas

Jefferson, had described slavery as

199

a necessary evil, a regrettable, but

unavoidable part of their society.

200

But by the 1830s, under increasing

pressure from the growing

201

abolitionist movements in the

north, southern intellectuals

202

began to mount a new defense.

203

They argued that slavery was not actually

evil at all, but that was a positive.

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Good to the slave.

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Sounds ridiculous.

206

But a leading proponent of this view was

a Virginia writer named George Fitzhugh

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in works like sociology for the South.

208

Fitzhugh launched a blistering attack

on the Free Labor Society of the North.

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He argued that northern factory workers

were, in fact slaves themselves.

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They were wage slaves, and

they were far more exploited.

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And insecure.

212

They were in a worse position than

the enslaved people in the south.

213

In his view, slavery in

the South was benevolent.

214

It was a paternalistic system that

protected black people because they

215

were supposedly inferior, and in

therefore, it ensured social harmony.

216

Unlike the chaotic competitive

capitalism of the North.

217

Perhaps no one articulated this new

aggressive pro-slavery worldview

218

with more confidence, at least

then whom we just mentioned.

219

James Henry Hammond of South Carolina,

the same man from the dueling story.

220

In a famous speech on the floor of

221

out two theories that would become

cornerstones of the pro-slavery argument.

222

The first was his mudsill theory.

223

Hammond argued that all great

civilizations required a laboring class to

224

perform the menial tasks, to provide the

foundation or the mudsill upon which the

225

elite could build progress and culture.

226

He declared quote.

227

In all social systems, there must

be a class to do the menial duties

228

to perform the drudgery of life.

229

It constitutes the very mudsill of

society and of political government.

230

Fortunately for the South, she found

a race adapted to that purpose, to

231

her hand, a race inferior to her own.

232

We use them for our purpose

and call them slaves.

233

End quote.

234

This theory explicitly naturalized

the exploitation of slavery.

235

It rooted it in a racist hierarchy.

236

He claimed that the South's enslaved

laborers were happy and well cared for.

237

While the North's white Hireling

class was miserable and dangerously,

238

they had the right to vote.

239

Second Hammond proclaimed the South's

immense economic power, a power

240

derived from its monopoly on the

world's most vital co commodity.

241

This was his caught his king

argument with breathtaking arrogance.

242

He threatened the north and the world.

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Quote.

244

Without firing a single gun,

without drawing a sword,

245

should they make war on us?

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We could bring the

whole world to our feet.

247

No.

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You dare not make war on cotton.

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No power on earth dares

to make war upon it.

250

Cotton is king.

251

End quote.

252

These ideals, the Honor code, the

positive good argument, and the Mudsill

253

theory were not separate concepts.

254

They formed a unified ideological system

designed to justify and maintain the

255

power of the planter class, the honor

code regulated power horizontally among

256

the elites, ensuring that only those who

demonstrated mastery were fit to rule.

257

The racial ideology of the Mudsill

theory justified their power vertically.

258

It justified their power over millions

of people, which would stay enslaved.

259

And violence.

260

The pistol in the dual or the

whip on the plantation was the

261

ultimate arbiter in both spheres.

262

It was a closed self-reinforcing

system of belief and brutality.

263

When I said it was a system built

on violence, this is what we mean.

264

The Enslavers built this world on these

ideals of honor, but also on domination.

265

They wrote books.

266

They gave speeches to

justify such use of force.

267

But what about the world of the

4 million people that they held

268

in bondage, how did they survive?

269

How did they.

270

How did they love?

271

How did they fight back?

272

We're gonna hear their stories

in their own words next.

273

While the planter class was

constructing the ideological

274

justifications for slavery, 4 million

people that they held as slaves

275

constructed a world all their own.

276

And it was a world built, not on

abstract theories, but on the lived

277

realities of family and faith, and I

cannot stress this enough of resistance.

278

A constant struggle to affirm

their humanity in a system

279

designed to destroy it.

280

The institution of slavery was in

many ways a war on the black family.

281

The ever present threat of sale

of one's family, men members meant

282

that spouses could be separated and

children torn from their parents at.

283

Any moment for enslaved women,

the burdens were immense.

284

They faced the triple exploitation of

their labor, their reproductive capacity

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to create more property for their

enslave, and the constant looming threat

286

of sexual violence from their enslavers.

287

The narrative of Harriet Jacobs

incidents in the life of a slave girl

288

provides one of the most powerful

accounts of this struggle writing.

289

Under the pseudonym Linda Brent

Jacobs details the relentless

290

sexual harassment and violence

she endured from her enslave, Dr.

291

Flint.

292

She writes.

293

His chilling words, he told me I

was his property, that I must be

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subject to his will in all things.

295

My soul revolted against the mean tyranny,

but where could I turn for protection?

296

He peopled my young mind with

unclean images and such as only

297

a vile monster could think of.

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End quote.

299

She's talking about rape to escape.

300

Flint's Predations Jacobs

made a desperate choice.

301

She entered into a relationship

with another white man named Mr.

302

Sands, with whom she had two children.

303

Her goal was not love, but survival,

and it was a desperate bid for a

304

measure of control over her own body.

305

She appeals directly to her northern

female readers who could not

306

comprehend her dilemma, but oh ye.

307

Happy women whose purity has

been sheltered from childhood,

308

who have been free to choose

the objects of your affection.

309

Do not judge the poor, desolate

slave girl to severely.

310

Her ultimate act of maternal

devotion was to hide for seven years.

311

In a tiny, cramped attic space, what

she called the loophole of retreat, just

312

so that she could remain close to her

children and protect them from the fate.

313

She's so feared,

314

just as enslaved people fought.

315

Bitterly to maintain family ties.

316

They also forged their own spiritual

lives, and it was separate from

317

the control of those who tried

to control it, their enslavers.

318

While these enslavers often forced

a version of Christianity upon

319

them, emphasized in passages like,

quote, servants, obey your masters.

320

The enslaved community

created what historians call.

321

An invisible institution in secret

gatherings, often deep in the woods, in

322

what were known as hush harbors, they

created a vibrant and syncretic faith.

323

These services that were secret,

blended Christian theology.

324

With West African traditions

featuring ecstatic worship call

325

and response, singing, dancing in

the creation of Negro spirituals.

326

The message here was one, not

of obedience, but of liberation.

327

As one formerly enslaved person

recalled, the white preacher would say.

328

Do whatsoever your master

tells you to do end quote.

329

But in the Hush Harbors, that

message was radically different.

330

It was a belief that God would

one day free them from slavery.

331

This Theology of Liberation was

a direct spiritual and political

332

challenge to the enslavers authority.

333

And the spirit of defines manifested

itself in a wide spectrum of resistance.

334

It wasn't limited to dramatic armed

rebellions like the one led by Nat

335

Turner in 1831, which some historians

believed was planned within the

336

network of these invisible churches.

337

Resistance was a daily practice,

and I cannot stress that.

338

Resistance takes many forms.

339

Enslaved people asserted their

agency in countless small but

340

significant ways, feigning illness

to reclaim a moment of rest.

341

Working slowly to protest their

exploitation, breaking tools to

342

disrupt the plantation's workflow,

stealing food to supplement the re

343

meager rations that they were given.

344

Each of these small acts, they might

seem minor in our eyes, but each of

345

them was a blow against the system, a

reclamation of their time and their labor,

346

and most importantly, their humanity.

347

In this context, the primary

battlefield was often cultural.

348

The slave system's logic demanded the

destruction of the black family to

349

facilitate sale and control of religion

to OB to ensure their obedience.

350

Therefore, the determined effort of

enslaved peoples to create and sustain

351

kinship bonds and to forge a wholly

new theology of freedom, were not.

352

Coping mechanisms.

353

They were direct strategic acts

of war against an institution that

354

sought to reduce them to isolated

soulless property units of labor.

355

Their most profound resistance

was their collective refusal.

356

To be dehumanized.

357

How do we make sense of

this paradoxical society?

358

For decades, historians have fought

over the very soul of the old south.

359

Was it a pre capitas aristocratic

world as one major school of thought

360

had argued, or was it the cutting edge

of a new, brutal form of capitalism?

361

As a more recent group of historians

now contend this isn't just semantics.

362

How we answer this question changes how we

understand the causes of the civil war and

363

the very nature of economic development.

364

So first, let's look at the paternalistic

thesis most famously articulated

365

by the historian Eugene Genovese

366

Genovese argued that the old South

was a unique paternalism society.

367

He contended that the master slave

relationship was not a simple cash

368

nexus, but a complex negotiated

system of reciprocal obligations.

369

That's how we called them.

370

However, grotesquely unequal

they might be in this view.

371

The planters saw themselves as patriarchs

responsible for the care and guidance

372

of their so-called enslaved family.

373

This self-serving ideology

Genovese argued nonetheless.

374

Gave the enslaved a framework

they could use to assert their own

375

humanity and demand certain rights.

376

He famously argued that slaves turned

paternalism into a weapon of resistance.

377

By holding masters to their own

paternalistic standards, they could

378

carve out a space for themselves, for

Genovese and the planter's worldview.

379

It was a fundamentally aristocratic

and pre capitas, and it was

380

driven by a desire for honor and

mastery, not just the bottom line.

381

However, in recent years, a new generation

of scholars, often called the new

382

historians of capitalism, has mounted

a powerful challenge to this view.

383

Historians like Edward Baptist and

Walter Johnson argue that slavery wasn't

384

a backwards obstacle to capitalism.

385

Slavery was capitalism in its most

dynamic, violent and profitable form.

386

Baptist argues that an incredible

400% increase in cotton picking

387

productivity between 1,818 60 was

not due to new technology, but to a

388

system of calibrated torture that he

calls the pushing system Overseers.

389

Use the whip not just for punishment,

but as a tool of production

390

management constantly pushing.

391

Enslaved workers to

meet ever higher quotas.

392

Violence itself was a technology

one to maximize output.

393

Johnson focuses on the Mississippi

Valley as the epicenter of

394

a global capitalist system.

395

He shows how the enslaved bodies

there were not just labor,

396

they were financial assets.

397

They were used as collateral for

mortgages and bonds that were traded

398

on national and international markets.

399

Fueling economic expansion far beyond the

plantations with which they were confined.

400

Baptist drives this point home

arguing that the massive increase in

401

cotton production was due to a quote,

absolutely necessary Increase in torture.

402

Which was the ultimate

cause of the economic boom.

403

So, which side is right?

404

Well, the debate is fierce.

405

Critics argue that genovese's

theory can downplay the raw economic

406

brutality of the S slave system.

407

The new historians of capitalism,

on the other hand, are sometimes

408

criticized for using an overly broad

definition of capitalism and for

409

misinterpreting some quantitative data.

410

Perhaps the most useful way to view this

debate is not as an either or question.

411

It's possible that the planter's

ideology was paternalistic while their

412

practice was brutally capitalist.

413

They spoke the language of honor-bound

patriarchs as genovese's work shows often

414

drawn from their diaries and letters.

415

This was how they justified their

world to themselves and to outsiders,

416

but their actions in the global

marketplace revealed in the economic.

417

Data and financial records studied

by Baptist and Johnsons were those of

418

ruthless profit maximizing capitalists.

419

The paternalistic self image was the

necessary psychological and cultural

420

mask that made the relentless re.

421

Pursuit of capitalist

exploitation, palatable.

422

It was the cultural software that

allowed the brutal hardware of

423

slave capitalism to function.

424

So we'll end here.

425

What was the Cotton kingdom?

426

Well, it was a modern, global

economic powerhouse built on a

427

foundation of violence and torture.

428

It was a society of genteel honor bound

planters who proffered from the systematic

429

rape and destruction of families.

430

It was a land of liberty for some built

on the absolute subjugation of millions.

431

It was in short, a kingdom of paradox held

together by violence and the immense world

432

shaping power of a single crop cotton.

433

But a kingdom built on such rapacious

agricultural system won that as

434

our textbook notes drain the soil

of nutrients, as well as a brutal

435

labor system that commodified

human beings could not stand still.

436

It had to expand.

437

The cotton kingdom was,

as Walter Johnson argues.

438

Pathologically expansive.

439

It needed more land for cotton,

and it needed new territories

440

to extend the reach of slavery.

441

This insatiable hunger for both

would soon push America's borders

442

westward across the plains, over the

mountains, all the way to the Pacific.

443

This relentless drive for expansion,

for more land, for cotton, for

444

more territory, for slavery, would

soon set the south on a collision

445

course with the rest of the nation.

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And with Mexico, it was a drive

that had a name, a belief that it

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was God's given right for America

to expand from sea to shining sea.

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Next time on Star-Spangled

Studies, we'll explore this

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explosive idea manifest destiny.

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I'm Dr.

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G, and I'll see y'all in the past.