178-620: The internal slave trade in the United States , also known as the domestic slave trade , the Second Middle Passage and the interregional slave trade , was the mercantile trade of enslaved people within the United States . It was most significant after 1808, when the importation of slaves from Africa was prohibited by federal law. Historians estimate that upwards of one million slaves were forcibly relocated from
356-416: A basis for the sale of all Negroes". As a rule, there was an inverse correlation between age and price for enslaved people over 40. For example, in 1835 South Carolina, when Ann Ball spent almost US$ 80,000 (equivalent to $ 2,362,839 in 2023) to buy 215 enslaved people from the estates of her deceased relatives, she made a point to buy several apparently elderly slaves (Old Rachel, Old Lucy, Old Charles) and
534-520: A chair at Johns Hopkins in 1889 using part of the fortune accumulated by her late husband, Baltimore trader Joseph S. Donovan . In the words of one scholar, slaveholders were, fundamentally, "speculator[s]" who hoped "to endow [their] progeny for generations to come" through the "capital accumulation" represented in the growing numbers of people they enslaved. The returns from slave ownership, therefore, were long-term and intergenerational. In their day, slave traders were called everything from broker ,
712-428: A change from largely self-sufficient farms, based on corn and pigs, to the growing of a cash crop of cotton or tobacco. Cotton cultivation took twice as many hours of work as raising corn. The farmers lost their freedom to determine what crops they would grow, ran into increasing indebtedness, and many were forced into tenancy or into working for someone else. Some out-migration occurred, especially to Texas, but over time,
890-412: A debt or earn money due to poverty . In the course of human history , slavery was a typical feature of civilization , and was legal in most societies, but it is now outlawed in most countries of the world, except as a punishment for a crime . In chattel slavery , the slave is legally rendered the personal property (chattel) of the slave owner. In economics, the term de facto slavery describes
1068-407: A dozen cities. Dealers in the upper south worked to collect what they called "shipping lots"—enough people to be worth spending time and money arranging for their transport south. There was a trading season, namely winter and spring, because summer and autumn were planting and harvesting time; farmers and plantation owners generally would not buy or sell until that year's crop was in. The seasonality of
1246-415: A factor in a market dominated by male buyers. Per Kotlikoff's calculations, "Throughout the ante-bellum 1800s, positive premia were paid for males, skilled slaves, slaves with guarantees, and children sold with their mothers." There were four main methods of forced transportation of the enslaved. Initially, transport was either on foot or by sailing ship, but following the popularization of the railroad and
1424-504: A kinship group and those related to the master. Slavery was practiced in many different forms: debt slavery, enslavement of war captives, military slavery, and criminal slavery were all practiced in various parts of Africa. Slavery for domestic and court purposes was widespread throughout Africa. When the Atlantic slave trade began, many of the local slave systems began supplying captives for chattel slave markets outside Africa. Although
1602-644: A lack of data, particularly with regard to slave prices, land values, and export totals for slaves, the true effects of the domestic slave trade, on both the economy of the Old South and general migration patterns of slaves into southwest territories, remain uncertain. These have served as points of contention among economic historians. The physical effect of forced labor (on remote plantation camps plagued with yellow fever , cholera , and malaria ), and social-emotional effect of family separation in American slavery ,
1780-615: A larger proportion of his property in negroes" wrote the Louisville Courier that "The secessionists are carrying out the principles and wishes of the abolitionists. Likely negroes could not be sold here at $ 500 in good money. Negro traders are as scarce here as in Boston." Still, the business remained brisk and prices rose in the protected interior of the CSA, and according to historian Robert Colby, "Confederates nevertheless interpreted
1958-517: A legal right to counsel, freedom from double jeopardy , a right to trial by jury in graver cases, and the right to grand jury indictment, but they lacked many other rights such as white adults' ability to control their own lives. Slavery predates written records and has existed in many cultures. Slavery is rare among hunter-gatherer populations because it requires economic surpluses and a substantial population density. Thus, although it has existed among unusually resource-rich hunter gatherers, such as
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#17327575065992136-580: A limited set of legal rights. For example, in the Province of New York , people who deliberately killed slaves were punishable under a 1686 statute. And, as already mentioned, certain legal rights attached to the nobi in Korea, to slaves in various African societies, and to black female slaves in the French colony of Louisiana . Giving slaves legal rights has sometimes been a matter of morality, but also sometimes
2314-586: A long-run competitive equilibrium. Using an admittedly limited set of data from Dunning School historian Ulrich Phillips (includes market data from Richmond, Charleston, mid-Georgia, and Louisiana), Robert Evans Jr. estimates that the average differential between slave prices in the Upper South and Deep South markets from 1830–1835 was $ 232. In 1876, Tarlton Arterburn told a newspaper reporter that they'd made an average profit of 30 to 40 percent "per head". Evans suggests that interstate slave traders earned
2492-548: A marriage where a girl, usually, is married off to a man to settle debts owed by her parents. The Chukri system is a debt bondage system found in parts of Bengal where a female can be coerced into prostitution in order to pay off debts. The word slavery has also been used to refer to a legal state of dependency to somebody else. For example, in Persia , the situations and lives of such slaves could be better than those of common citizens. Forced labour, or unfree labour,
2670-420: A matter of self-interest. For example, in ancient Athens , protecting slaves from mistreatment simultaneously protected people who might be mistaken for slaves, and giving slaves limited property rights incentivized slaves to work harder to get more property. In the southern United States prior to the extirpation of slavery in 1865 , a proslavery legal treatise reported that slaves accused of crimes typically had
2848-458: A nigger Hilo! Hilo! He sold her first to Louisianner Hilo! Hilo! And den from dat to Alabammer Hilo! Hilo! Ladies, ain't you sorry! Packet sails to-morrow, Sails to Looisiana. Ladies, ain't you sorry! See, de trader got me! Ladies, fare you well. The light-wood fire was made, and the negroes dropped in from the neighboring plantations, singing as they came. The driver of
3026-598: A not-insignificant number of white slave traders provided for the families of mixed-raced children they'd formed with women they'd once enslaved , multiple sources attest that Baltimore slave trader James F. Purvis quit the human-trafficking business and devoted himself to banking and charity projects after a religious conversion, and New Orleans trader Elihu Creswell emancipated his 51 slaves upon his death and even funded their transportation to free states. As historian Deyle put it in Carry Me Back (2005): "While there
3204-454: A part of the country which was distinguished by the colour of the soil. The part of the country possessing this thick, dark, and naturally rich soil was, of course, the part of the South where the slaves were most profitable, and consequently they were taken there in the largest numbers. Later, and especially since the war, the term seems to be used wholly in a political sense—that is, to designate
3382-413: A permanent part of a master's lineage and the children of slaves could become closely connected with the larger family ties. Children of slaves born into families could be integrated into the master's kinship group and rise to prominent positions within society, even to the level of chief in some instances. However, stigma often remained attached and there could be strict separations between slave members of
3560-535: A premium. According to economist Laurence Kotlikoff , as the American Civil War was beginning in 1861, the typical price of a prime-age male slave sold in New Orleans was US$ 1,381 (equivalent to $ 46,831 in 2023). On average the prices for light-skinned female slaves were 5.4 percent higher than the prices for darker-skinned female slaves, possibly indicating colorism and sexual attraction as
3738-453: A result of breaking the law, becoming indebted, suffering a military defeat, or exploitation for cheaper labor; other forms of slavery were instituted along demographic lines such as race or sex . Slaves may be kept in bondage for life, or for a fixed period of time after which they would be granted freedom . Although slavery is usually involuntary and involves coercion, there are also cases where people voluntarily enter into slavery to pay
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#17327575065993916-740: A short time they exercised salutary restraints; but soon they were evaded. The Creek Nation was then an Indian Territory, under the jurisdiction of the General Government, lying immediately on our eastern border. Here Negro Traders sought a shield for their operations, and our citizens went there to make purchases. Worn out at last with such subterfuges and shifts, the Legislature repealed this restrictive law..." When Louisiana banned slave traders from out of state in 1832, Austin Woolfolk set up operations at Fort Adams, Mississippi , which
4094-584: A sign of black blood in him." The amount $ 9,000 in 1853 would be over $ 250,000 today. There were several broad categories of work for which enslaved people were purchased: agriculture, domestic service, mechanical, and commercial-industrial. Agricultural workers grew and processed cash crops like cotton and sugar, or managed herds of cattle in Texas, etc. Domestics worked in the household or in hotels and taverns, cooking, cleaning, laundering clothes, producing household goods, and providing childcare, including supplying
4272-1240: A small scale, especially in the first quarter of the 19th century, examples being the slave auctions held at Garland Burnett 's tavern in Baltimore, Washington Robey 's slave pen and tavern in Washington, D.C., Turner Brashears of Brashears' Stand along the Natchez Trace , as well as the notorious Patty Cannon ring in Delaware. Chesapeake cities like Baltimore , Alexandria , Washington, D.C. , and Richmond were "slave collecting and resale centers." Major slave-buying markets were located Charleston , Savannah , Memphis , and above all, New Orleans . Economists estimate that more than 135,000 enslaved people were sold in New Orleans between 1804 and 1862. Some traders only bought and sold locally; smaller interstate trading companies would typically have both upper south and lower south locations, for buying and selling, respectively. Larger interstate firms, like Franklin & Armfield , and Bolton, Dickens & Co. , might have locations or traders under contract in
4450-533: A source of labor in early America. It is estimated that between 1790 and 1860 approximately 835,000 slaves were relocated to the American South. The biggest sources for the domestic slave trade were "exporting" states in the Upper South, especially Virginia and Maryland, and as well as Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Missouri. From these states most slaves were imported into the Deep South , to
4628-428: A wage greater than that of an alternative profession in skilled mechanical trades. However, if slave traders possessed skills similar to those used in supervisory mechanics (e.g. skills used by a chief engineer), then slave traders received an income that was not greater than the one they would have received had they entered in an alternative profession. In addition to full-time traders, so-called tavern traders worked on
4806-497: Is a form of unfree labour in which a person works to pay off a debt by pledging himself or herself as collateral. The services required to repay the debt, and their duration, may be undefined. Debt bondage can be passed on from generation to generation, with children required to pay off their progenitors' debt. It is the most widespread form of slavery today. Debt bondage is most prevalent in South Asia. Money marriage refers to
4984-597: Is estimated that by the 1890s the largest slave population of the world, about 2 million people, was concentrated in the territories of the Sokoto Caliphate . The use of slave labour was extensive, especially in agriculture." The Anti-Slavery Society estimated there were 2 million slaves in Ethiopia in the early 1930s out of an estimated population of 8 to 16 million. Slave labour in East Africa
5162-576: Is no record of any slave traders feeling guilt over what they did for a living, the actions taken by the New Orleans dealer Elihu Creswell do raise some questions." Abolitionist Lewis Hayden wrote to Harriet Beecher Stowe , "I knew a great many of them, such as Neal , McAnn, Cobb, Stone, Pulliam , and Davis , &c. They were like Haley, they meant to repent when they got through." Stowe commented on slave traders in A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853), in reference to her fictional character Mr. Haley : The writer has drawn in this work only one class of
5340-487: Is often used as a pejorative to describe any activity in which one is coerced into performing. Some argue that military drafts and other forms of coerced government labour constitute "state-operated slavery." Some libertarians and anarcho-capitalists view government taxation as a form of slavery. "Slavery" has been used by some anti-psychiatry proponents to define involuntary psychiatric patients, claiming there are no unbiased physical tests for mental illness and yet
5518-517: Is sometimes used to describe an individual who is forced to work against their own will, under threat of violence or other punishment. This may also include institutions not commonly classified as slavery, such as serfdom , conscription and penal labour . As slavery has been legally outlawed in all countries, forced labour in the present day (frequently referred to as " modern slavery ") revolves around illegal control. Human trafficking primarily involves women and children forced into prostitution and
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5696-591: Is that white southerners with conservative views on taxes, moral values, and national security would vote for Democratic presidential candidates who didn't share their views. They did that as part of a strategy for maintaining white supremacy in the South. Kevin Phillips states that, "Beginning in 1948, however, the white voters of the Black Belts shifted partisan gears and sought to lead the Deep South out of
5874-422: Is the ownership of a person as property , especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavement is the placement of a person into slavery, and the person is called a slave or an enslaved person (see § Terminology ). Many historical cases of enslavement occurred as
6052-463: Is the fastest growing form of forced labour, with Thailand, Cambodia, India, Brazil and Mexico having been identified as leading hotspots of commercial sexual exploitation of children . In 2007, Human Rights Watch estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 children served as soldiers in then-current conflicts. More girls under 16 work as domestic workers than any other category of child labour, often sent to cities by parents living in rural poverty as with
6230-530: The Georgia-man who would take them away to, if not the geographical Georgia , an allegorical "Georgia," elsewhere in the cotton and sugar lands far south from where they were raised. In the earliest years of the market, "dozens of independent speculators...bought lots of ten or so slaves, generally on credit, in Upper-South states like Virginia and Maryland." In 1836 a Philadelphia paper characterized
6408-655: The 1964 presidential election , "Once again, the high level of support for Goldwater in the Deep South, and especially their Black Belt counties, spoke to the enduring significance of white resistance to black progress." White southern voters consistently voted for the Democratic Party for many years to hold onto Jim Crow Laws. Once Franklin D. Roosevelt came to power in 1932 , the limited southern electorate found itself supporting Democratic candidates who frequently did not share its views. Journalist Matthew Yglesias argues: The weird thing about Jim Crow politics
6586-509: The 2020 presidential election , the state of Georgia was considered a toss-up state hinting at a possible Democratic shift in the area. It ultimately voted Democratic, in favor of Joe Biden. During the 2021 January Senate runoff elections, Georgia also voted for two Democrats, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock , with Warnock winning re-election to a full term the following year. Republicans currently hold every statewide office, its state Supreme Court, and its legislature. From colonial times to
6764-636: The American Civil War , Florida and Texas were sparsely populated and not fully settled, with Florida and Texas being the least-populated and third least-populated of the 11 Confederate states, respectively. When "Deep South" first began to gain mainstream currency in print in the middle of the 20th century, it applied to the states and areas of South Carolina, Georgia, southern Alabama, northern Florida, Mississippi, northern Louisiana , West Tennessee , southern Arkansas , and eastern Texas, all historical areas of cotton plantations and slavery. This
6942-607: The American Indian peoples of the salmon -rich rivers of the Pacific Northwest coast, slavery became widespread only with the invention of agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution about 11,000 years ago. Slavery was practiced in almost every ancient civilization. Such institutions included debt bondage, punishment for crime, the enslavement of prisoners of war , child abandonment , and
7120-637: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 . Since then, upwards of 90 percent of African Americans in the South have voted for the Democratic Party, including 93 percent for Obama in 2012. Historian Thomas Sugrue attributes the political and cultural changes, along with the easing of racial tensions, as the reason why Southern voters began to vote for Republican national candidates, in line with their political ideology. Since then, white Deep South voters have tended to vote for Republican candidates in most presidential elections. Times
7298-547: The Congo Free State and French ruled Ubangi-Shari , labour was demanded as taxation; private companies were conceded areas within which they were allowed to use any measures to increase rubber production. Convict leasing was common in the Southern United States where the state would lease prisoners for their free labour to companies. Depending upon the era and the country, slaves sometimes had
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7476-518: The Indian subcontinent , and later to the Americas. These traders captured Bantu peoples ( Zanj ) from the interior in present-day Kenya , Mozambique and Tanzania and brought them to the coast. There, the slaves gradually assimilated in rural areas, particularly on Unguja and Pemba islands. Some historians assert that as many as 17 million people were sold into slavery on the coast of
7654-679: The Mississippi Delta region. The Arkansas Delta is also sometimes included, though Arkansas is usually considered to be "in the peripheral" or Rim South rather than the Deep South. Seven states seceded from the United States before the firing on Fort Sumter and the start of the American Civil War , which originally formed the Confederate States of America . In order of secession, they are South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. The first six states to secede were those that held
7832-563: The Muslim empire and claimed over "tens of thousands of lives in lower Iraq". The Zanj who were taken as slaves to the Middle East were often used in strenuous agricultural work. As the plantation economy boomed and the Arabs became richer, agriculture and other manual labour work was thought to be demeaning. The resulting labour shortage led to an increased slave market. In Algiers ,
8010-640: The Potomac River , and that Southern society resembled those of the Caribbean. Although often used in history books to refer to the seven states that originally formed the Confederacy, the term "Deep South" did not come into general usage until long after the Civil War ended. For at least the remainder of the 19th century, "Lower South" was the primary designation for those states. At the time of
8188-730: The Sahara desert to North Africa to be sold to Mediterranean and Middle eastern civilizations. During the Red Sea slave trade , slaves were transported from Africa across the Red Sea to the Arabian Peninsula. The Indian Ocean slave trade , sometimes known as the east African slave trade, was multi-directional. Africans were sent as slaves to the Arabian Peninsula , to Indian Ocean islands (including Madagascar ), to
8366-523: The Upper South occurred in 1928 , 1948 , 1964 , 1968 , and, to a lesser extent, in 1952 , 1956 , 1992 , and 2008 . Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee fared well in the Deep South in the 2008 Republican primaries , losing only one state (South Carolina) while running (he had dropped out of the race before the Mississippi primary). Georgia is currently considered a Swing state . In
8544-438: The Upper South , places like Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Missouri, to the territories and states of the Deep South , especially Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas. Economists say that transactions in the inter-regional slave market were driven primarily by differences in the marginal productivity of labor , which were based in the relative advantage between climates for
8722-405: The bombardment of Algiers by an Anglo-Dutch fleet in 1816. Under Omani Arabs, Zanzibar became East Africa's main slave port , with as many as 50,000 African slaves passing through every year during the 19th century. Some historians estimate that between 11 and 18 million African slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 to 1900 AD. Eduard Rüppell described
8900-453: The border states . The term "Deep South" is defined in a variety of ways. Most definitions include the following states: Louisiana , Mississippi , Alabama , Georgia , and South Carolina . Texas and Florida are sometimes included, due to being peripheral states, having coastlines with the Gulf of Mexico , their history of slavery, large African American populations, and being part of
9078-522: The separation of powers , or what Comte called the "separation of the spiritual and the temporal" during the Middle Ages and the end of slavery, and Smith's criticism of masters, past and present. As Smith stated in the Lectures on Jurisprudence , "The great power of the clergy thus concurring with that of the king set the slaves at liberty. But it was absolutely necessary both that the authority of
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#17327575065999256-481: The steamboat in the 1840s, both were commonly used. Combining modes was also common, for example, as reported in the Anti-Slavery Bugle in 1849: "A week ago last Monday morning I took the cars at Baltimore for Washington. While standing on the platform where passengers step into the ears, Rev. John F. Cook of this City, came up and entered into conversation with me. He had been to Baltimore to preach
9434-402: The "slave-consuming states," especially Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman attribute the larger proportion of the slave migration due to planters who relocated their entire slave populations to the Deep South to develop new plantations or take over existing ones. Walter Johnson disagrees, finding that only one-third of the population movement south
9612-521: The 150 largest population centers in the United States are ranked below: * Indicates state capital Other substantial cities include: Other cities sometimes included as part of the Deep South: * As part of the Sun Belt and Atlantic Plain , the Deep South tends to have a Subtropical climate with long hot summers and short mild winters. The 35th parallel north , which is used to define
9790-430: The 1964 Freedom Summer . The Deep South has three major Metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) located solely within its boundaries, with populations exceeding 1,000,000 residents (Four including Memphis). Atlanta , the 8th largest metro area in the United States, is the Deep South's largest population center, followed by Memphis , New Orleans , and Birmingham . The 17 Deep South metropolitan areas (MSAs) within
9968-539: The 19th century. An alternative contemporary hypothesis states that Medieval Latin sclāvus via * scylāvus derives from Byzantine σκυλάω ( skūláō , skyláō ) or σκυλεύω ( skūleúō , skyleúō ) with the meaning "to strip the enemy (killed in a battle)" or "to make booty / extract spoils of war". This version has been criticized as well. There is a dispute among historians about whether terms such as " unfree labourer " or "enslaved person", rather than "slave", should be used when describing
10146-404: The 2015 U.S. gross domestic product...The unpaid fruits of their labors created an interest so strong that between 1861 and 1865, Confederate leaders staked hundreds of thousands of lives and the future of their civilization on it." As told by historian Frederic Bancroft , "Slave trading was considered a sign of enterprise and prosperity." The internal slave trade among colonies emerged in 1760 as
10324-402: The American South, they are passed on from one generation to the next with all the certainty and inevitability of a genetic trait." And yet despite the dehumanizing doctrines of white supremacy that seemingly mandated separatism and black oppression, there is evidence that at least some slave traders were perfectly capable of recognizing enslaved people as human, rather than some form of livestock:
10502-581: The Americas to abolish slavery was Brazil, in 1888 . Chattel slavery survived longest in the Middle East . After the Trans-Atlantic slave trade had been suppressed, the ancient Trans-Saharan slave trade , the Indian Ocean slave trade and the Red Sea slave trade continued to traffic slaves from the African continent to the Middle East. During the 20th century, the issue of chattel slavery
10680-950: The Arabian Peninsula: in Oman , in Qatar , in Saudi Arabia , in the Trucial States and in Yemen . Legal chattel slavery was finally abolished in the Arabian Peninsula in the 1960s: Saudi Arabia and Yemen in 1962, in Dubai in 1963, and Oman as the last in 1970. The last country to abolish slavery, Mauritania , did so in 1981 . The 1981 ban on slavery was not enforced in practice, as there were no legal mechanisms to prosecute those who used slaves, these only came in 2007. Indenture, also known as bonded labour or debt bondage,
10858-646: The Atlantic slave trade was not the only slave trade from Africa, it was the largest in volume and intensity. As Elikia M'bokolo wrote in Le Monde diplomatique : The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from
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#173275750659911036-422: The Caribbean plantation model, relying on tobacco as a cash crop from the start. Tidewater had few urban centers, instead establishing multiple markets along tributaries. Cotton and rice operations were large and factory-like, while tobacco profits hinged on skilled, careful, and efficient labor units. Despite being the southernmost part of the continental United States, South Florida is not considered part of
11214-406: The Deep South is considered to be "an area roughly coextensive with the old cotton belt , from eastern North Carolina through South Carolina, west into East Texas, with extensions north and south along the Mississippi." The Deep South is generally associated historically with cotton production. The 11 Confederate States, including the Deep South, were overwhelmingly rural. New Orleans , Louisiana
11392-439: The Deep South who reported only a single European-American ancestry group, the 1980 census showed the following self-identification in each state in this region: These figures do not take into account people who self-identified as English and some other ancestral group. When the two were added together, people who self-identified as being English with other ancestry, made up an even larger portion of southerners. As of 2003 ,
11570-654: The Deep South, although there were local exceptions wherever conditions did not support the system. The sharp division between town and country, the intensive use of a few cash crops, and the high proportion of slaves, all differed from the Upland South. The Tidewater region , encompassing the Chesapeake Bay and Eastern North Carolina , stands out as different from both the Deep South and Upland South. Its history of slavery originated in Virginia and predated
11748-630: The Deep South, characterized by very rich black soil that supported cotton plantations, is a geological formation known as the Black Belt . The Black Belt has since become better known as a sociocultural region ; in this context it is a term used for much of the Cotton Belt, which had a high percentage of African-American slave labor. The Mississippi Delta has been called " The Most Southern Place on Earth ", because of its unique racial, cultural, and economic history. The colony of South Carolina
11926-772: The Deep South. It has a tropical climate and high levels of migration from the Caribbean and Latin America , particularly in the densely populated Miami metropolitan area . After 1950, the region became a major center of the Civil Rights Movement , including: the work of Martin Luther King Jr. , the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott , the 1960 founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and
12104-522: The Democratic Party has won in the Deep South since the late 20th century include: the 1976 election when Georgia native Jimmy Carter received the Democratic nomination, the 1980 election when Carter won Georgia; the 1992 election when Arkansas native and former governor Bill Clinton won Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arkansas, the 1996 election when the incumbent president Clinton again won Louisiana, Tennessee and Arkansas, and when Georgia
12282-466: The Democratic Party. Upcountry, pineywoods and bayou voters felt less hostility towards the New Deal and Fair Deal economic and caste policies which agitated the Black Belts, and for another decade, they kept The Deep South in the Democratic presidential column. In the 1968 election , George Wallace carried all five Deep South states except for South Carolina, as well as Arkansas . Phillips emphasizes
12460-549: The Haitian restaveks . Forced marriages or early marriages are often considered types of slavery. Forced marriage continues to be practiced in parts of the world including some parts of Asia and Africa and in immigrant communities in the West. Marriage by abduction occurs in many places in the world today, with a 2003 study finding a national average of 69% of marriages in Ethiopia being through abduction. The word slavery
12638-509: The Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa, and approximately 5 million African slaves were bought by Muslim slave traders and taken from Africa across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert between 1500 and 1900. The captives were sold throughout the Middle East. This trade accelerated as superior ships led to more trade and greater demand for labour on plantations in the region. Eventually, tens of thousands of captives were being taken every year. The Indian Ocean slave trade
12816-576: The Nazis and the Soviet Union placed increasing importance on the labor provided in those camps, leading to a growing tendency among historians to designate such systems as slavery. A combination of these include the encomienda where the Spanish Crown granted private individuals the right to the free labour of a specified number of natives in a given area. In the "Red Rubber System" of both
12994-414: The Old South (1931) found—to the contrary of Phillips' position—that many traders were esteemed members of their communities. Members of the "best families," and a number of leading lights of the early Republic, including Chief Justice John Marshall and seventh President Andrew Jackson , were engaged in slave speculation. Contemporary researcher Steven Deyle argues that the "trader's position in society
13172-480: The Old South (1931) young female slaves were also considered an excellent financial investment: "Not only real estate, but also stocks, bonds and all other personal property were little prized in comparison with slaves...Absurd as it now seems, slaves, especially girls and young women, because of prospective increase, were considered the best investment for persons of small means." Irish economic theorist John Elliot Cairnes suggested in his work The Slave Power that
13350-781: The Umayyad Caliphate in Iraq. The Zanj Rebellion , a series of uprisings that took place between 869 and 883 near Basra (also known as Basara), against the slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate situated in present-day Iraq, is believed to have involved enslaved Zanj that had originally been captured from the African Great Lakes region and areas further south in East Africa . It grew to involve over 500,000 slaves and free men who were imported from across
13528-407: The United States from the Caribbean, South America, and Africa was illegal but piracy continued until the opening of the American Civil War. Piracy was most active in the 1810s, with New Orleans and Amelia Island off Spanish Florida being key centers, and in the 1850s, when pro-slavery activists sought to drive down slave prices by illegally importing directly from Africa. Kidnapping into slavery in
13706-530: The United States was an ongoing issue. Unaccompanied children and people of color traveling to port cities and border states were particularly vulnerable. There are multiple accounts of armed gangs breaking into the homes of free people in the dead of night and carrying away whole families. The lucky ones were sometimes redeemed from the local slave jail by friends or lawyers before they were shipped south. According to Frederic Bancroft in Slave-Trading in
13884-458: The Upper South of "breeding" slaves for export. The proven reproductive capacity of enslaved women was advertised as selling point and a feature that increased value. Although not as significant as the exportation of slaves to Deep South, farmers and land owners who needed to pay off loans increasingly used slaves as a cash substitute. This had also contributed to the growth of the internal slave trade. Economic historians have offered estimates for
14062-484: The annual revenue generated by the inter-regional slave trade for exporters that range from $ 3.75 to $ 6.7 million. The demand for prime-aged slaves, from the ages of 15 to 30, accounted for 70 percent of the slave population relocated to the Deep South. Since the ages of slaves were often unknown by the traders themselves, physical attributes such as height often dictated demand in order to minimize asymmetric information. Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman estimated that
14240-472: The aristocracy. In the 2020s, in North Korea , Kippumjo ("Pleasure Brigades") are made up of women selected from the general population to serve as entertainers and as concubines to the rulers of North Korea. "Tribute labor" is compulsory labor for the state and has been used in various iterations such as corvée , mit'a and repartimiento . The internment camps of totalitarian regimes such as
14418-412: The bar, the press, and the pulpit, all pronounce to be a proper one. In this respect, society certainly imitates the unreasonableness of the ancient Egyptians , who employed a certain class of men to prepare dead bodies for embalming, but flew at them with sticks and stones the moment the operation was over, on account of the sacrilegious liberty which they had taken. If there is an ill-used class of men in
14596-496: The capital of Algeria, captured Christians and Europeans were forced into slavery. In about 1650, there were as many as 35,000 Christian slaves in Algiers. By one estimate, raids by Barbary slave traders on coastal villages and ships extending from Italy to Iceland, enslaved an estimated 1 to 1.25 million Europeans between the 16th and 19th centuries. However, this estimate is the result of an extrapolation which assumes that
14774-401: The century from 1580 to 1680. By extension, for the 250 years between 1530 and 1780, the figure could easily have been as high as 1,250,000. Davis' numbers have been refuted by other historians, such as David Earle, who cautions that true picture of Europeans slaves is clouded by the fact the corsairs also seized non-Christian whites from eastern Europe. In addition, the number of slaves traded
14952-400: The condition of some or all human-owned animals, arguing that their status is comparable to that of human slaves. The labour market, as institutionalized under contemporary capitalist systems, has been criticized by mainstream socialists and by anarcho-syndicalists , who utilise the term wage slavery as a pejorative or dysphemism for wage labour . Socialists draw parallels between
15130-458: The conditions of unfree labour and forced labour that most slaves endure. Mauritania was the last country in the world to officially ban slavery, in 1981, with legal prosecution of slaveholders established in 2007. However, in 2019, approximately 40 million people, of whom 26% were children, were still enslaved throughout the world despite slavery being illegal. In the modern world, more than 50% of slaves provide forced labour , usually in
15308-537: The counties where the black people outnumber the white. Most White people in the Deep South who identified themselves with one European ethnic group in the 1980 census self-identified as English . This occurred in every southern state with the exception of Louisiana where more White people self-identified as French than English. A large number of the White population also derives from ethnic groups of Ireland ( Irish and Ulster Scots ). With regard to White people in
15486-495: The day before. While talking we advanced a few steps, which brought us opposite the Jim Crow car , in which were seated a clerk or runner from Donovan's slave-pen , with five slaves, a young man and woman, the exact picture of despondency and desolation, and three children, who seemed satisfied with the novelty of the scene about them. These slaves were on their way to Alexandria, to be sent thence overland, by Bruin & Hill , to
15664-452: The deterioration of soil and an increase in demand for food products, states in the upper South shifted crop emphasis from tobacco to grain, which required less labor. This decreased demand left states in the Upper South with an excess supply of labor. With the forced Indian removal by the US making new lands available in the Deep South, there was much higher demand there for workers to cultivate
15842-402: The domestic slave trade was one that resulted in "superprofits" for traders. But Jonathan Pritchett points to evidence that there were a significant number of firms engaged in the market, a relatively dense concentration of these firms, and low barriers to entry. He says that traders who were exporting slaves from the Upper South were price-taking, profit-maximizers acting in a market that achieved
16020-604: The enslavement of slaves' offspring. Slavery was widespread in Africa, which pursued both internal and external slave trade. In the Senegambia region, between 1300 and 1900, close to one-third of the population was enslaved. In early Islamic states of the western Sahel , including Ghana , Mali , Segou , and Songhai , about a third of the population were enslaved. In European courtly society, and European aristocracy, black African slaves and their children became visible in
16198-606: The factories and sweatshops of the private sector of a country's economy. In industrialised countries, human trafficking is a modern variety of slavery; in non-industrialised countries, people in debt bondage are common, others include captive domestic servants , people in forced marriages , and child soldiers . The word slave was borrowed into Middle English through the Old French esclave which ultimately derives from Byzantine Greek σκλάβος ( sklábos ) or εσκλαβήνος ( ésklabḗnos ). According to
16376-456: The far Southern market."—"Slavery in the District" Anti-Slavery Bugle , July 6, 1849 In the early 19th century several slave states had unenforced statutes prohibiting the interstate slave trade in hopes of minimizing the increase of black populations within those states. These laws were undermined in many ways; for example, " Hamburg, South Carolina was built up just opposite Augusta , for
16554-422: The first frost. Some common environments include bayous and swamplands, as well as the southern pine forests . Due to its proximity to the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean , hurricanes are also a frequently-occurring natural disaster. Booker T. Washington wrote in his 1901 autobiography I have often been asked to define the term "Black Belt". So far as I can learn, the term was first used to designate
16732-506: The focus is on increasing the number of slaves doing simple tasks rather than upgrading their efficiency. For example, it is sometimes argued that, because of this narrow focus, technology in Greece – and later in Rome – was not applied to ease physical labour or improve manufacturing. Scottish economist Adam Smith stated that free labour was economically better than slave labour, and that it
16910-480: The fourth-largest city in the country based in part on profits from the slave trade and related businesses. The price differences between the Upper and Deep South created demand. Slave traders took advantage of this arbitrage opportunity by buying at lower prices in the Upper South and then selling slaves at a profit after taking or transporting them further south. Some scholars believe there was an increasing prevalence in
17088-516: The free white babies they cared for with their own human milk. Mechanics were expensive and prized: these were the smiths, builders, craftsmen, etc. Finally, commercial-industrial slaves were put to work all over the south in ironworks, steamboat boiler rooms, on railroads, at gin-houses, bagasse-burners, lumber mills, turpentine stills, and so forth. The owner of a slave might or might not be a slave's employer : owners often rented, leased, or "hired out" their slaves. According to historian Bancroft, in
17266-539: The fringe of the Deep South, during the " Solid South " period. At the turn of the 20th century, all Southern states, starting with Mississippi in 1890, passed new constitutions and other laws that effectively disenfranchised the great majority of blacks and sometimes many poor whites as well. Blacks were excluded subsequently from the political system entirely. The white Democratic-dominated state legislatures passed Jim Crow laws to impose white supremacy , including caste segregation of public facilities. In politics,
17444-444: The gang to a task and made each worker's performance dependent on the actions of the others. The slaves chopped out the weeds that surrounded the cotton plants as well as excess sprouts. Plow gangs followed behind, stirring the soil near the plants and tossing it back around the plants. Thus, the gang system worked like an assembly line . Since the 18th century, critics have argued that slavery hinders technological advancement because
17622-544: The generic term favored in Charleston, to nigger-trader (sometimes transcribed as niggah-tradah ), a term that appears in both slave traders' own descriptions of themselves in oral interviews and in records of African-American folk music of the era. Negro trader , negro speculator , and slave dealer were common occupational titles that appeared in census records and city directories. Anti-slavery activists called them soul drivers . Slaves sometimes spoke of
17800-402: The great slave market that was New Orleans, enslaved people imported from Virginia, and to a lesser extent Maryland and South Carolina, were advertised as an especially desirable product, whereas "the many slaves brought from Missouri and Kentucky" were rarely advertised by their place of origin. "Acclimated" slaves known to be immune to yellow fever and other communicable diseases also commanded
17978-520: The health of the slave trade as embodying that of their nation." Times got still harder for traders when the Union blockade and total U.S. military control of the Mississippi River prevented the trafficking of people from, say, rural Missouri to New Orleans. But the slave trade, as an integral part of slavery, persisted throughout Confederate-controlled territory until very nearly the end of
18156-421: The historical Confederate States of America . The eastern part of Texas is the westernmost extension of the Deep South, typically the area east of Dallas . North Florida is also part of the Deep South region, typically the area north of Ocala . West Tennessee is sometimes included due to its history of slavery, its prominence in cotton production during the antebellum period, and cultural similarity to
18334-479: The inhumanity of slavery, with person implying a degree of autonomy that slavery does not allow. As a social institution, chattel slavery classes slaves as chattels ( personal property ) owned by the enslaver; like livestock, they can be bought and sold at will. Chattel slavery was historically the normal form of slavery and was practiced in places such as the Roman Empire and classical Greece , where it
18512-433: The inter-regional slave trade was a major component in ensuring the economic vitality of the Old South. Many economic historians, however, have since refuted the validity of this point. The general consensus seems to support Professor William L. Miller's claim that the inter-regional slave trade "did not provide the major part of the income of planters in the older states during any period." The returns gained by traders from
18690-569: The inter-regional slave trade, it is possible that forced migration of slaves would have occurred naturally due to natural population pressures and the subsequent increase in land prices. In 1965, William L. Miller contended that, "it is even doubtful whether the interstate slave traffic made a net contribution to the westward flow of the population." Historian Charles S. Sydnor wrote in 1933, "The number of slaves brought into Mississippi either by slavetraders or by immigrant masters cannot be precisely stated." Robert Gudmestad found that "Disentangling
18868-597: The interior of West Africa. These expeditions were typically carried out by African kingdoms , such as the Oyo Empire ( Yoruba ), the Ashanti Empire , the kingdom of Dahomey , and the Aro Confederacy . It is estimated that about 15 percent of slaves died during the voyage , with mortality rates considerably higher in Africa itself in the process of capturing and transporting indigenous peoples to
19046-415: The king and of the clergy should be great. Where ever any one of these was wanting, slavery still continues..." Even after slavery became a criminal offense, slave owners could get high returns. According to researcher Siddharth Kara , the profits generated worldwide by all forms of slavery in 2007 were $ 91.2 billion. That was second only to drug trafficking, in terms of global criminal enterprises. At
19224-560: The labor-intensive sugar cane and cotton crops. The extensive development of cotton plantations created the highest demand for labor in the Deep South. At the same time, the invention of the cotton gin in the late 18th century transformed short-staple cotton into a profitable crop that could be grown inland in the Deep South. Settlers pushed into the South, expelling the Five Civilized Tribes and other Native American groups. The cotton market had previously been dominated by
19402-551: The largest percentage of slaves. Ultimately, the Confederacy included eleven states. A large part of the original "Cotton Belt" is sometimes included in Deep South terminology. This was considered to extend from South Carolina Lowcountry to Georgia and North Florida , through the Gulf States as far west as East Texas , including West Tennessee , eastern Arkansas, and up the Mississippi embayment . The inner core of
19580-572: The late 1300s and 1400s. Starting with Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor , black Africans were included in the retinue . In 1402 an Ethiopian embassy reached Venice . In the 1470s black Africans were painted as court attendants in wall paintings that were displayed in Mantua and Ferrara . In the 1490s black Africans were included on the emblem of the Duke of Milan . During the trans-Saharan slave trade , slaves from West Africa were transported across
19758-522: The late 16th and early 17th century observers, account for around 35,000 European Christian slaves held throughout this period on the Barbary Coast, across Tripoli, Tunis, but mostly in Algiers. The majority were sailors (particularly those who were English), taken with their ships, but others were fishermen and coastal villagers. However, most of these captives were people from lands close to Africa, particularly Spain and Italy. This eventually led to
19936-501: The long-staple cotton cultivated primarily on the Sea Islands and in the coastal South Carolina Lowcountry . The consequent boom in the cotton industry, coupled with the labor-intensive nature of the crop, created a need for slave labor in the Deep South that could be satisfied by excess supply further north. The increased demand for labor in the Deep South pushed up the price of slaves in markets such as New Orleans , which became
20114-476: The losses of Sudanese slaves being transported on foot to Egypt: "after the Daftardar bey's 1822 campaign in the southern Nuba mountains, nearly 40,000 slaves were captured. However, through bad treatment, disease and desert travel barely 5,000 made it to Egypt." W.A. Veenhoven wrote: "The German doctor, Gustav Nachtigal , an eye-witness, believed that for every slave who arrived at a market three or four died on
20292-408: The lowest-priced single person was Old Peg, purchased for US$ 20 (equivalent to $ 590.71 in 2023), compared to an average price of $ 371 per. Another illustration of comparative slave prices is from the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation program: "The highest priced slave was a blacksmith worth $ 1800, and the lowest [priced was] a two-months-old mulatto baby, worth $ 25." On the other end of
20470-529: The majority of Black Americans in the South live in the Black Belt in the American South from Virginia to Texas. Hispanic and Latino Americans largely started arriving in the Deep South during the 1990s, and their numbers have grown rapidly. Politically they have not been very active. Political expert Kevin Phillips states that, "From the end of Reconstruction until 1948, the Deep South Black Belts, where only whites could vote, were
20648-471: The map on the right. In 1765, London philanthropist Dr. John Fothergill remarked on the cultural differences of the British American colonies southward from Maryland and those to the north, suggesting that Southerners were more similar to the people of the Caribbean than to the colonies to the north. A visiting French dignitary concurred in 1810 that American customs seemed "entirely changed" over
20826-549: The nation's leading Democratic Party bastions." From the late 1870s to the mid-1960s, conservative whites of the Deep South held control of state governments and overwhelmingly identified with and supported the Democratic Party . The most powerful leaders belonged to the party's moderate-to-conservative wing. The Republican Party would only control mainly mountain districts in Southern Appalachia , on
21004-437: The negro-traders. There are all varieties of them, up to the great wholesale purchasers, who keep their large trading-houses; who are gentlemanly in manners and courteous in address; who, in many respects, often perform actions of real generosity; who consider slavery a very great evil, and hope the country will at some time be delivered from it, but who think that so long as clergyman and layman, saint and sinner, are all agreed in
21182-574: The ninth to the nineteenth).... Four million enslaved people exported via the Red Sea , another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean. The trans-Atlantic slave trade peaked in the late 18th century, when the largest number of slaves were captured on raiding expeditions into
21360-593: The northern boundary of the subtropics , defines the southern border of Tennessee , and the border between North Carolina and Georgia . The climate tends to display more pronounced Subtropical characteristics the closer one gets to the Gulf Coast . For example, the Deep South substantially overlaps with the range of the American alligator . Crops grow readily in the Deep South due to its climate consistently providing growing seasons of at least six months before
21538-502: The number of European slaves captured by Barbary pirates was constant for a 250-year period: There are no records of how many men, women and children were enslaved, but it is possible to calculate roughly the number of fresh captives that would have been needed to keep populations steady and replace those slaves who died, escaped, were ransomed, or converted to Islam. On this basis it is thought that around 8,500 new slaves were needed annually to replenish numbers – about 850,000 captives over
21716-522: The opposite holds true, then it is more costly for landowners to guard the slaves than to employ paid workers who can demand only low wages because of the degree of competition. Thus, first slavery and then serfdom gradually decreased in Europe as the population grew. They were reintroduced in the Americas and in Russia as large areas of land with few inhabitants became available. Slavery is more common when
21894-526: The oppression and violence in the South. Beginning with the Goldwater–Johnson election of 1964, a significant contingent of white conservative voters in the Deep South stopped supporting national Democratic Party candidates and switched to the Republican Party. They still would vote for many Democrats at the state and local level into the 1990s. Political scientist Seth McKee concluded that in
22072-504: The outside as sentinels. They sometimes have thousands here for sale, who in consequence of their number suffer most horribly." Similarly, in Alabama, a historian explained in 1845 that a ban had been undermined to the point that it was ultimately abandoned entirely: "...The people of Alabama at one time became alarmed at the evils which they properly anticipated would grow out of this traffic. Their Legislators enacted laws against it, and for
22250-478: The plantation, a colored man, brought out baskets of corn in the husk, and piled it in a heap; and the negroes began to strip the husks from the ears, singing with great glee as they worked, keeping time to the music, and now and then throwing in a joke and an extravagant burst of laughter. The songs were generally of a comic character; but one of them was set to a singularly wild and plaintive air, which some of our musicians would do well to reduce to notation. These are
22428-488: The poor rural South, as well as poor whites. In the post- World War II era, Democratic Party presidents and national politicians began to support desegregation and other elements of the Civil Rights Movement , from President Harry S. Truman 's desegregating the military, to John F. Kennedy 's support for non-violent protests. These efforts culminated in Lyndon B. Johnson 's important work in gaining Congressional approval for
22606-512: The population continued to grow and the farms were subdivided smaller and smaller. Growing discontent helped give rise to the Populist movement in the early 1890s. It represented a sort of class warfare , in which the poor farmers sought to gain more of an economic and political voice. By 1850, the term "Cotton States" was in common use, and the differences between the Deep South (lower) and Upland South (upper) were recognized. A key difference
22784-487: The price spectrum from old women and babies is the amount men would pay for sexual access to physically attractive young female slaves, the so-called " fancy girls ," such as was the case is this post-war boast by former slave trader Jack Campbell: "Long as you ask about it, I remember the biggest money I ever got for a nigger was $ 9,000 for a devilish pretty quadroon wench that I sold in Louisville, about '52 or '53. She
22962-494: The production of staple goods. The trade was strongly influenced by the invention of the cotton gin , which made short-staple cotton profitable for cultivation across large swathes of the upland Deep South (the Black Belt ). Previously the commodity was based on long-staple cotton cultivated in coastal areas and the Sea Islands . The disparity in productivity created arbitrage opportunities for traders to exploit, and it facilitated regional specialization in labor production. Due to
23140-464: The propriety and necessity of slave holding, it is better that the necessary trade in the article be conducted by men of humanity and decency, than by swearing, brutal men, of the Tom Loker school. These men are exceedingly sensitive with regard to what they consider the injustice of the world, in excluding them from good society, simply because they undertake to supply a demand in the community, which
23318-406: The psychiatric patient must follow the orders of the psychiatrist. They assert that instead of chains to control the slave, the psychiatrist uses drugs to control the mind. Drapetomania was a pseudoscientific psychiatric diagnosis for a slave who desired freedom; "symptoms" included laziness and the tendency to flee captivity. Some proponents of animal rights have applied the term slavery to
23496-469: The purpose of furnishing slaves to the planters of Georgia. Augusta is the market to which the planters of Upper and Middle Georgia bring their cotton; and if they want to purchase negroes, they step over into Hamburg and do so. There are two large houses there, with piazzas in front to expose the 'chattels' to the public during the day, and yards in rear of them where they are penned up at night like sheep, so close that they can hardly breathe, with bull-dogs on
23674-471: The region became known for decades as the "Solid South." While this disenfranchisement was enforced, all of the states in this region were mainly one-party states dominated by white Southern Democrats . Southern representatives accrued outsized power in the Congress and the national Democratic Party, as they controlled all the seats apportioned to southern states based on total population, but only represented
23852-548: The richer subset of their white populations. In the 1928 presidential election , Al Smith received serious backlash as a Catholic, but carried all 5 Deep South states, though he nearly lost Alabama. Major demographic changes would ensue in the 20th century. During the two waves of the Great Migration (1916–1970), a total of six million African Americans left the South for the Northeast, Midwest, and West, to escape
24030-475: The sale and shipment of enslaved people were in turn reinvested in banking, railroads, and even colleges. A striking example of the connection between the domestic slave trade and higher education can be found in the 1838 sale of 272 slaves by the Maryland Jesuits to Louisiana; a small portion of the proceeds of the sale was used to pay down the debts of Georgetown College . Caroline Donovan endowed
24208-446: The sale price of slaves were offset by both the fall in the value of land, that resulted from the subsequent decrease in the marginal productivity of land, and the fall in the price of output, which occurred due to the increase in market size as given by westward expansion. Kotlikoff suggested that the net effect of the inter-regional slave trade on the economy of the Old South was negligible, if not negative. The profits realized through
24386-901: The ships. Slavery in Mexico can be traced back to the Aztecs . Other Amerindians , such as the Inca of the Andes, the Tupinambá of Brazil, the Creek of Georgia, and the Comanche of Texas, also practiced slavery. Deep South The Deep South or the Lower South is a cultural and geographic subregion of the Southern United States . The term was first used to describe
24564-468: The slave trade accounted for 16 percent of the relocation of enslaved African Americans, in their work Time on the Cross . This estimate, however, was severely criticized for the extreme sensitivity of the linear function used to gather this approximation. A more recent estimate, given by Jonathan B. Pritchett , has this figure at about 50 percent, or about 835,000 slaves total between 1790 and 1850. Without
24742-495: The slave trade: "If you begin with the absolute belief in white supremacy—unquestioned white superiority/unquestioned black inferiority—everything falls neatly into place: the African is inferior racial 'stock,' living in sin and ignorance and barbarism and heathenism on the 'Dark Continent' until enslaved...Slavery thus miraculously becomes a form of 'uplift' for this supposedly benighted and brutish race of people. And once notions of white supremacy and black inferiority are in place in
24920-412: The slaves were not treated as chattel slaves and were given certain rights in a system similar to indentured servitude elsewhere in the world. The forms of slavery in Africa were closely related to kinship structures. In many African communities, where land could not be owned, enslavement of individuals was used as a means to increase the influence a person had and expand connections. This made slaves
25098-491: The southern British colonies from Spanish Florida. Oglethorpe imagined a province populated by "sturdy farmers" who could guard the border; because of this, the colony's charter prohibited slavery. Unfortunately, the ban on slavery was lifted by 1751, and the colony became a royal colony in 1752. At the time of the American Revolution , South Carolina and Georgia were majority African American, as indicated by
25276-523: The state and local levels. This trend culminated in 2014 when the Republicans swept every statewide office in the Deep South region midterm elections . As a result, the Republican party came to control all the state legislatures in the region, as well as all House seats that were not representing majority-minority districts . Presidential elections in which the Deep South diverged noticeably from
25454-484: The states which were most economically dependent on plantations and slavery , specifically Louisiana , Mississippi , Alabama , Georgia , and South Carolina . After the American Civil War ended in 1865, the region suffered economic hardship and was a major site of racial tension during and after the Reconstruction era . Before 1945, the Deep South was often referred to as the "Cotton States" since cotton
25632-445: The tasks are relatively simple and thus easy to supervise, such as large-scale monocrops such as sugarcane and cotton , in which output depended on economies of scale . This enables systems of labour, such as the gang system in the United States, to become prominent on large plantations where field hands toiled with factory-like precision. Then, each work gang was based on an internal division of labour that assigned every member of
25810-482: The three-way 1968 presidential election: Wallace won very high support from Black Belt whites and no support at all from Black Belt Negroes. In the Black Belt counties of the Deep South, racial polarization was practically complete. Negroes voted for Hubert Humphrey, whites for George Wallace. GOP nominee Nixon garnered very little backing and counties where Barry Goldwater had captured 90 percent to 100 percent of
25988-524: The time the weighted average global sales price of a slave was estimated to be approximately $ 340, with a high of $ 1,895 for the average trafficked sex slave, and a low of $ 40 to $ 50 for debt bondage slaves in part of Asia and Africa. The weighted average annual profits generated by a slave in 2007 was $ 3,175, with a low of an average $ 950 for bonded labour and $ 29,210 for a trafficked sex slave. Approximately 40% of slave profits each year were generated by trafficked sex slaves, representing slightly more than 4% of
26166-464: The trade is visible in the record books of Missouri trader John R. White , which show that "Over 90 percent of the slaves imported to New Orleans were sold in the six months between November and April." The notion that slave traders were social outcasts of low reputation, even in the South, was initially promulgated by defensive southerners and later by figures like historian Ulrich B. Phillips . Historian Frederic Bancroft , author of Slave-Trading in
26344-419: The trade of labour as a commodity and slavery. Cicero is also known to have suggested such parallels. Economists have modeled the circumstances under which slavery (and variants such as serfdom ) appear and disappear. One theoretical model is that slavery becomes more desirable for landowners where land is abundant, but labour is scarce, such that rent is depressed and paid workers can demand high wages. If
26522-589: The various strands of forced migration is like trying to untie the Gordian knot . Migration with owners, planter purchase, and the interstate trade blended together to form a seamless whole." The transatlantic slave trade was not prohibited under federal law until 1808. Imports from Africa to Southern states were ongoing from 1776 until that time, most often through the ports of Charleston and Savannah . Imports to Cuba, Brazil, and America often involved similar personnel and practices. Post-1808 importation of slaves to
26700-399: The victims of slavery. According to those proposing a change in terminology, slave perpetuates the crime of slavery in language by reducing its victims to a nonhuman noun instead of "carry[ing] them forward as people, not the property that they were" (see also People-first language ). Other historians prefer slave because the term is familiar and shorter, or because it accurately reflects
26878-482: The vote in 1964. The Republican Party in the South had been crippled by the disenfranchisement of blacks, and the national party was unable to relieve their past with the South where Reconstruction was negatively viewed. During the Great Depression and the administration of Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt , some New Deal measures were promoted as intending to aid African Americans across the country and in
27056-690: The war. Ziba B. Oakes was still listing slaves in Charleston, South Carolina newspaper ads in November 1864. A handful of American-flagged ships were still moving enslaved people from Africa to Cuba and Brazil until 1867, when American participation in the slave trade ended once and for all. Slavery was a massive element of the U.S. national economy and even more so the economy of the South: "In 1860, enslaved people were worth more than $ 3 billion (~$ 83 billion in 2023) to their owners. In today's economy, that would be equivalent to $ 12.1 trillion or 67 percent of
27234-408: The way ... Keltie ( The Partition of Africa , London, 1920) believes that for every slave the Arabs brought to the coast at least six died on the way or during the slavers' raid. Livingstone puts the figure as high as ten to one." Systems of servitude and slavery were common in parts of Africa, as they were in much of the ancient world . In many African societies where slavery was prevalent,
27412-480: The widespread view, which has been known since the 18th century, the Byzantine Σκλάβινοι ( Sklábinoi ), Έσκλαβηνοί ( Ésklabēnoí ), borrowed from a Slavic tribe self-name *Slověne, turned into σκλάβος , εσκλαβήνος ( Late Latin sclāvus) in the meaning 'prisoner of war slave', 'slave' in the 8th/9th century, because they often became captured and enslaved. However this version has been disputed since
27590-600: The words: Johnny come down de hollow. Oh hollow! Johnny come down de hollow. Oh hollow! De nigger-trader got me. Oh hollow! De speculator bought me. Oh hollow! I'm sold for silver dollars. Oh hollow! Boys, go catch de pony. Oh hollow! Bring him round de corner. Oh hollow! I'm goin' away to Georgia. Oh hollow! Boys, good-by forever! Oh hollow! Enslaved people Slavery
27768-541: The work of negro brokers: "They conceive the business of pawn brokers and merchandize brokers. They lend money on the security of slaves, taking the latter as a pledge, to be sold if the pledge be not redeemed. They advance cash on slaves to be sold at auction or private sale, deducting from the proceeds of sale their commission and expenses. They buy and sell slaves upon commission, to suit their customers, and sometimes doubtless, buy and sell free people of color on pretence of their being slaves." The argument has been made that
27946-433: The world's 29 million slaves. A widespread practice was branding , either to explicitly mark slaves as property or as punishment. Slaves have been owned privately by individuals but have also been under state ownership. For example, the kisaeng were women from low castes in pre modern Korea, who were owned by the state under government officials known as hojang and were required to provide entertainment to
28124-987: The world, it is certainly the slave-traders; for, if there is no harm in the institution of slavery, if it is a divinely-appointed and honourable one, like civil government and the family state, and like other species of property relation, then there is no earthly reason why a man may not as innocently be a slave-trader as any other kind of trader. Male slaves were worth more than female slaves; one study found that on average males sold for nine percent more than females. But female slaves came with "increase"—children born enslaved to an enslaved woman were saleable, thus providing excellent return on investment. Prime age slaves were those ages 10 to 35, or more broadly enslaved children older than eight and enslaved adults younger than 40, because people of those ages were presumed to be able work and/or reproduce for an extended period of time. Overall, buyers competed most for male field hands aged 18 to 30, so "the selling price of this class supplied something of
28302-795: Was addressed and investigated globally by international bodies created by the League of Nations and the United Nations, such as the Temporary Slavery Commission in 1924–1926, the Committee of Experts on Slavery in 1932, and the Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery in 1934–1939. By the time of the UN Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery in 1950–1951, legal chattel slavery still existed only in
28480-531: Was considered a keystone of society. Other places where it was extensively practiced include Medieval Egypt , Subsaharan Africa, Brazil, the United States, and parts of the Caribbean such as Cuba and Haiti. The Iroquois enslaved others in ways that "looked very like chattel slavery." Beginning in the 18th century, a series of abolitionist movements saw slavery as a violation of the slaves' rights as people (" all men are created equal "), and sought to abolish it. Abolitionism encountered extreme resistance but
28658-619: Was dominated by a planter class who initially migrated from the British Caribbean island of Barbados, and used the Barbados Slave Code of 1661 as a model to control and terrorize the African American slave population. Barbados provided a steady flow of sugar produced by slave labor to Europe and North America. The Georgia colony was initially founded by James Oglethorpe as a buffer state to defend
28836-578: Was drawn from the Zanj , Bantu peoples that lived along the East African coast. The Zanj were for centuries shipped as slaves by Arab traders to all the countries bordering the Indian Ocean during the Indian Ocean slave trade . The Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs recruited many Zanj slaves as soldiers and, as early as 696, there were slave revolts of the Zanj against their Arab enslavers during their slavery in
29014-529: Was due to wholesale relocation of slave owner and chattel, while the other two-thirds of the shift was due to the commerce in slaves. Historians who argue in favor of soil exhaustion as an explanation for slave importation into the Deep South posit that exporting states emerged as slave producers because of the transformation of agriculture in the Upper South. By the late 18th century, the coastal and Piedmont tobacco areas were being converted to mixed crops because of soil exhaustion and changing markets. Because of
29192-604: Was eventually successful. Several of the states of the United States began abolishing slavery during the American Revolutionary War. The French Revolution tried to abolish slavery in 1794, but a permanent abolition did not occur until 1848. In much of the British Empire, slavery was subject to abolition in 1833, throughout the United States it was abolished in 1865 and in Cuba in 1886. The last country in
29370-469: Was hyperactive, with exaggerated estimates relying on peak years to calculate averages for entire centuries, or millennia. Hence, there were wide fluctuations year-to-year, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, given slave imports, and also given the fact that, prior to the 1840s, there are no consistent records. Middle East expert, John Wright, cautions that modern estimates are based on back-calculations from human observation. Such observations, across
29548-646: Was multi-directional and changed over time. To meet the demand for menial labour, Bantu slaves bought by east African slave traders from southeastern Africa were sold in cumulatively large numbers over the centuries to customers in Egypt, Arabia, the Persian Gulf, India, European colonies in the Far East, the Indian Ocean islands , Ethiopia and Somalia. According to the Encyclopedia of African History , "It
29726-446: Was nearly impossible to end slavery in a free, democratic, or republican form of government since many of its legislators or political figures were slave owners and would not punish themselves. He further stated that slaves would be better able to gain their freedom under centralized government, or a central authority like a king or church. Similar arguments appeared later in the works of Auguste Comte , especially given Smith's belief in
29904-558: Was not unproblematic and owners who dealt with the trader felt the need to satisfy themselves that they acted honorably," while Michael Tadman contends that "'trader as outcast' operated at the level of propaganda" whereas white slave owners almost universally professed a belief that slaves were not human like them, and thus dismissed the consequences of slave trading as beneath consideration. Similarly, historian Charles Dew read hundreds of letters to slave traders and found virtually zero narrative evidence for guilt, shame, or contrition about
30082-412: Was nothing short of catastrophic. The history of the domestic slave trade can very clumsily be divided into three major periods: The domestic slave trade wilted during American Civil War—there was a measurable price drop between 1860 and 1862, due to "market uncertainty" discouraging speculators. In May 1861, a "Southern Mississippian" who seemed to oppose secession even though "no man in Mississippi has
30260-410: Was only 18, and was about as white as you or me, and her two children had light, curly hair. Her master lived down near Bowling Green , and though he didn't want to part with her he was so down on his luck that he had to sell her. I heard, too, that his wife swore that nigger must leave the plantation or she would go home to her family. My instructions were not to take less than $ 6,000 for the girl, and I
30438-461: Was so set on having the girl, I believe he would have given $ 20,000 for her if anybody had bid her up that high. He carried her home that day, and I ain't going to tell you anything more about him than that he made a big name in the Southern army and was killed at the head of his soldiers. One of this woman's children by her first master lives in a Massachusetts town now and is a rich man. There isn't
30616-553: Was the Deep South's plantation -style cash crop agriculture (mainly cotton, rice and sugar), using the forced labor of enslaved African Americans on large farms while plantation owners tended to live in towns and cities. This system of plantation farming was originally developed in the Caribbean West Indies and introduced to the United States in South Carolina and Louisiana, from where it spread throughout
30794-439: Was the first steamboat landing beyond the state line. Similarly, the organizing act for Mississippi Territory prohibited the introduction of slaves from outside the U.S. but "the foreign trade ban seems to have been ignored." The slave trade appears in the lyrics of working songs sung by African-American slaves in the antebellum U.S.: It's old Van Horn, de nigger trader Hilo! Hilo! He sold his wife to buy
30972-456: Was the only populous city in the Confederacy during the Civil War. After the Civil War, the region was economically poor. After Reconstruction ended in 1877, a small fraction of the white population composed of wealthy landowners, merchants and bankers controlled the economy and, largely, the politics. Most white farmers were poor and had to do manual work on their farms to survive. As prices fell, farmers' work became harder and longer because of
31150-473: Was the part of the South many considered the "most Southern." In 1939, Florida was described as "still very largely an empty State," with only North Florida largely settled until after World War II . Later, the general definition expanded to include all of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, as well as often taking in bordering areas of Eastern Arkansas , West Tennessee , East Texas and North Florida . In its broadest application,
31328-516: Was the primary cash crop for economic production. The civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s helped usher in a new era, sometimes referred to as the New South . The Deep South is part of the highly-religious, socially conservative Bible Belt and is currently a Republican Party stronghold. It is contrasted with the Mid-South and Tidewater region , as well as the Upper South and
31506-413: Was to get a big percentage on all over that, so when they put her on the block I talked her up for all she was worth...There was more than twenty men bidding for her, and the fellow that got her for $ 9,000 was a rich and gay young bachelor from Tennessee, who happened to be in the city on a spree and was attracted by curiosity to the sale. He was a little drinky and wasn't caring anything for his ducats . He
31684-404: Was won by Joe Biden in the 2020 United States presidential election . In 1995, Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich was elected by representatives of a Republican-dominated House as Speaker of the House . The incumbent Speaker of the House since October 2023 , Republican Mike Johnson , is from Louisiana. Since the 1990s the white majority has continued to shift toward Republican candidates at
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