Cotton Cycle and Slavery Transformed

The Cotton Planting Cycle

1. reinvest profits

2. buy (more) land, slaves, and supplies on credit (slaves and land were used as collateral)

3. sell cotton on the international market

   1. prices for everything increased over time

Slavery Transformed

• harsher conditions because of…
  • breakdown of social networks
  • market pressures
  • early scientific management
• increased violence led to higher productivity

Enslaved Resistance and White Terror

• everyday resistance most common
• insurrections (real and imagined)
• august 1831, the Nat Turner rebellion happened in Virginia
• published account reshaped the South
  • black-led churches were banned
  • anti-literacy laws were increased
  • slave patrols intensified
• insurrection “scares” were common, especially in the newly settled southwest

A New Defense of Slavery

• feared abolition without relocation would lead to a “race war”
• argued slavery was essential to southern society
• “the positive good defense”
  • religious elements
  • “civilizing” the enslaved
  • pseudo-scientific racism
  • black enslavement guaranteed white equality and social harmony

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