which plantation industry required. That system was always confined, accordingly, within the staple areas and within the districts. where economical transportation could be had, and where public policy was friendly. The friendliness or unfriendliness of a given region toward the plantation system might undergo decisive change. For example, the invention of the cotton-gin and the improvement of transportation made the Piedmont available for planters; while, on the other hand, the exhaustion of soils in parts of Maryland and Virginia and the rise of tobacco production at a smaller cost in the West, drove out the plantation system from some of the tide-water counties there. The actual development as regards slavery in any given locality, whether in the South or the North, was the resultant of the interplay of these forces working for and against the plantation system. There were large parts of the South which, like the whole North, failed at any time to attract planters. The area, on the other hand, which invited them in large numbers may be divided into several distinct staple-producing sections, and may best be studied statistically through inquiry into the growth of the industrial units in selected counties which possess the type-features of the section. For the colonial period, hardly any reliable statistics in this connection are available for study; but in view of the fairly complete. repetition of processes in the successive settlement of similar areas. in the plantation districts, it will here suffice to use the data for the period from 1790 to 1860, which is covered by the United States censuses and by certain local tax returns which we may use to supplement the census enumerations. The United States Census Bureau has never printed any local statistics of slaveholdings except for the year 1860, and many of the manuscript census returns for the early decades have been irretrievably lost; for example, those for Virginia and Kentucky to 1810, for Tennessee and Georgia to 1820, and for Alabama to 1830. But counties in Maryland may be taken as typical of the black belt of the whole Virginia-Maryland region, and a South Carolina coast district as an example for the Georgia lowlands also. There is no trouble in securing tables for the Mississippi-Louisiana region; and as for the Georgia-Carolina upland cotton belt, the summaries here presented from the manuscript tax returns in selected counties are preferable to those of the decennial censuses, because they were made much more frequently, and a series of returns for closely adjacent years is available for the study of the effects of particular economic crises, and the like. AM. HIST. REV., VOL. XI.-53. L colonial organization, through and past their agricultural prime, and in turn came to furnish numerous emigrants to colonize the lands farther west. These upland Georgia counties which we have selected, Oglethorpe, Hancock, and Clarke, all lying in the older part of the cotton belt, are probably the most instructive of all for which we have data; for in the period covered by these statistics these counties went through the full development from practically frontier and Greenwich GORMAY & Co. GROWTH OF SLAVEHOLDINGS IN SELECTED Counties of the Georgia COTTON BELT. (Statistics compiled from county tax digests.) By study of these tables and charts, which date from the time when cotton production began in the upland district, the effect of the growth of the cotton industry may be watched and measured. The tables deal with both the number and the size of the slaveholdings. Studying them with the chronology of prosperity and depressions in the cotton belt in mind, we find the following facts: 1. The average size of slaveholdings tended to increase with moderation in ordinary periods, while in periods of either marked prosperity or severe depression there was nearly always a stimulated growth of the larger slaveholdings and a thinning out of the The manuscript returns from which these summaries were made are to be found in the court-houses at the respective county-seats. 2 Cf. Political Science Quarterly, XX. 267. small ones, and hence a quickened growth in the size of the average slaveholding. 2. The aggregate number of slaveholdings tended to increase or decrease according to the stage of development which the community had reached. That is, so long as population was scanty and opportunity abundant, the small producers as well as the large ones flowed in. But when the land had become more completely occupied and opportunity restricted, an outflow would begin, and the smallest units would lead the exodus. Both flush times and hard times quickened this fluctuation of the total of units, merely hastening movements which were already in progress. These tendencies are illustrated more fully in Oglethorpe and Hancock Counties than in Clarke, for in Clarke County there lay the considerable town of Athens. A town, of course, contributed to the total of slaves a large number of domestic servants, who were not affected by the laws controlling the units in agriculture. For the sake of clearness in the accompanying charts, Oglethorpe is used as a single type county for the upland cotton belt. In the respective charts, the line for Oglethorpe County shows: (1) a moderate and steady growth in the average size of slaveholdings; (2) a fluctuating but almost continuous rise in the total number of slaves; and (3) a decline in the total of whites after about 1810; (4) that the number of slaveholdings increased until 1810, held its own to 1820, when the aggregate population reached its highest point, and decreased thereafter through the lessening of the number 1000 800 GOO 400 200 0 ***** Middle Georgia - Oglethorpe County ***Middle Georgia - Oglethorpe County, Maryland-Dorchester County -Mississippi Bottoms - Jefferson County Movement of Slavcholding and Non-Slaveholding Families in Typical Counties Total Slaveholding Families 1790 1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 Total Non-Slaveholding Families 1790 1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 ******* Middle Georgia- Oglethorpe County ***Middle Georgia-Oglethorpe County ----Maryland - Prince George County -Mississippi Bottoms-Jefferson County of small slaveholders; (5) that the non-slaveholders, throughout the period covered, decreased continuously, though with diminishing speed in the later decades. The number of non-slaveholders for the several periods has been roughly ascertained by comparing the number of slaveholding families in a given year with the total number of families, as stated in the federal censuses. |