The Southern Experience

As a result of several related factors, including climate, economy, racial composition, and social structure, the South developed differently from other regions. Its semitropical climate worked against agricultural diversity, causing concentration on staple crops. Its agrarian life and relative lack of communication with the rest of the country brought isolation and produced a sense of unity and self-consciousness. The plantation system, which became the core of the economy of the Old South, required an abundant and cheap labor supply and led to the importation of blacks from Africa and the institution of slavery. This system, where one race dominated another, and inherited ideas about class from England combined to produce a stratified social structure and the doctrine of white supremacy.

The dominance of Southern whites became the central theme of Southern history during two centuries of slavery and a century of segregation.

Although both the Spanish and the French explored and colonized in the area, in Florida and Louisiana, it was the English who eventually established their civilization in the Southern regions.

Early English settlements were made along the coastal plain, the so-called Tidewater area. The first permanent colony was established at Jamestown, in what became Virginia, in 1607. Near the end of the 17th century, Germans, Scotch-Irish, Huguenots (French Protestants), Swiss, and a few others began to join the predominantly English settlers. Immigration, however, tapered off in the late 18th century. During the colonial period, Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia were founded, as well as Maryland and Delaware, which were considered part of the South.

In each of the Southern colonies, the nature of the colony, the development of government and the social life of the people were bound up with the cultivation of staple crops—tobacco, rice, sugar, and, later and most importantly, cotton. From these crops developed the plantation system and most of the activities of Southern life. This rural way of life promoted individualism and a decentralized government.

The division of society into clearly defined classes had taken form by the end of the 17th century. At the top of the social structure was a small leisure class of planters who owned large tracts of land and large numbers of slaves. Below the planter aristocrats were small slaveholders, yeoman farmers, and poor whites. At the bottom were the blacks, most of whom, as slaves, were considered merely property. (The first blacks were brought to America in 1619 as indentured servants, slavery being instituted a few decades later.) In 1790 there were approximately 1,200,000 whites in the South and 650,000 slaves.

Southern sectionalism emerged slowly, reaching a peak in the second quarter of the 19th century and culminating in the movement for an independent South that resulted in civil war. This period in Southern history—from the end of the Revolution up to the Civil War—is known as the Antebellum (prewar) Period.

Within a few decades of the American Revolution, a homogeneous society, based on the institution of slavery and holding a distinctive social and political philosophy, had become entrenched in the Tidewater area. Although antagonisms were to develop between the older established areas and the frontier as settlement pushed westward, each new region eventually adopted Southern institutions and ideas.

A great wave of westward migration occurred following the War of 1812. Whites and slaves moved into the area that soon became the heart of the Cotton Kingdom—Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. Opening new lands to the plantation system gave new life to slavery. As early as 1820, North and South clashed over its expansion into the territories. The Missouri Compromise, which was required to keep political balance between free and slave states, became an important step in developing Southern self-consciousness. (

Economic, social, and political differences between South (which was mainly agricultural, rural, and oligarchical) and North (more industrial, urban, and democratic) had been intensifying for some time. Controversy had arisen over the Southern states' proclaimed right to nullify federal laws they found objectionable. ( Ultimately, slavery became the primary focus of the sectional strife. Many Southerners justified what they called their “peculiar institution” as a positive good, seeking not only its protection but also its expansion. In the North, meanwhile, abolitionist sentiment grew. ( Feeling themselves to be increasingly oppressed, Southerners began to talk of secession.

Nearly three-fourths of the whites in the South owned no slaves and had no economic interest in maintaining slavery. Nonetheless, the plantation system ruled the South, set the pattern for Southern society, and united the people. Following the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln, whose Presidency the South feared would be a threat to its property and safety, 11 states withdrew from the Union and formed a confederacy. Most in the South had hoped for peaceful separation, but four years of bitter, bloody civil war ensued and resulted in the abolition of slavery. (

The war ended in 1865. The South had been defeated, but left unresolved was the conflict between the basic economic and social institutions of the North and the South. The South's land was desolated and its economy shattered. The end of slavery also caused tremendous social upheaval. A period of military occupation, called Reconstruction, followed.

Southern whites viewed Reconstruction as a time of economic and political exploitation at the hands of Radical Republicans in the North and “carpetbaggers,” “scalawags,” and newly freed blacks in the South. It left a majority of Southerners united in their devotion to their “Lost Cause,” in their allegiance to the Democratic party, and in their determination to restore white dominance and black servitude.

As the last quarter of the 19th century began, the South slowly started its recovery from the effects of war and Reconstruction. Staple crops continued at the core of the economy, but diversification of agriculture was undertaken. Tenant farming, engaged in by both poor whites and blacks, filled the economic void created by the loss of slave labor. ( The processes of industrialization, in the form of mining and manufacturing, began in the mountain regions and in the cities. However, poverty remained for decades, with agriculture being perennially depressed.

At the same time, white supremacy was being restored through various means, including intimidation by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, enactment of so-called “Jim Crow” (segregation) laws, and domination of government by the all-white Democratic party.

Forces of change, however, were at work. Economic interrelationships between North and South grew. Within the South itself, conflict was being waged between traditionalists and advocates of a New South.

Politically, the South remained solidly Democratic during the first half of the 20th century, giving rise to the term “Solid South.” Its leadership was generally conservative, at times demagogic, and uniformly determined to maintain the Southern way of life. Blacks had been effectively disenfranchised. ( Their lot in the South was poverty and segregation, and large numbers migrated to Northern urban areas especially at the time of World Wars I and II. Many poverty-stricken whites also migrated to other regions. Economic conditions gradually improved as industry took firm root, aided by the development of electric power. Rural electrification, as well as mechanization, improved the agricultural situation.

As the South became more affluent, urbanized, and dependent upon industry and commerce, it moved toward the mainstream of American life. The racial problem, however, remained the focal point of Southern life in the 1960's. Gradually—although not without massive resistance and sometimes violence—federal court desegregation orders, civil rights legislation, and the civil rights movement brought blacks closer to equality. In the 1970's, several major Southern cities, including Atlanta in 1973, New Orleans in 1977, and Birmingham and Richmond in 1979, elected black mayors. In 1989 L. Douglas Wilder became the first black to be elected governor of Virginia. In the South in the 1980's and 1990's, population grew rapidly, industry expanded, and the Republican party increased its political power.