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Slavery and the Old South
Summary
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With the invention of the cotton gin, cotton became the backbone of the South's economy, and new lands in the West, steamboat transportation, a hungry domestic and European market, and slave labor undergirded and strengthened it. Slaves were essential to the South for their cheap labor and role as a rallying point for whites—despite diverse economic circumstances, rhetoric held that all whites were "equal" in their superiority to blacks. Slave owners contended that they worked hard and paternalistically for their slaves, and offered numerous creative defenses for the institution. For slaves themselves, life was exceedingly difficult, but they could extract some comfort and a measure of dignity from their religion, families, and culture, as well as from tactics of resistance ranging from work slowdowns to escape to outright revolt. Those who did escape or were freed often joined communities of free blacks, more than half of which were in the South and were severely circumscribed by law.
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