Courtney Langevin

April 14, 2003

HIST 4000

Final Paper

<center>King Cotton’s Devastating Social and Economic Consequences for Antebellum Yeomen Farmers </center>

The antebellum South’s social and economic environment was greatly affected by the emergence of the commercialized cotton boom that occurred throughout the early and mid 1800s. This market explosion proposed economic and social obstacles for yeomen farmers in North Georgia and implored this group to drastically alter their methods of farming, trade transactions, and ultimately, their simple lifestyles. The intense demands of the expanded economy challenged the yeomen values of independence and self- sufficiency and imposed a dependence on the upper class that contradicted their ideals. Thus, these transformations collectively contributed to the class conflict that emerged from the socio-economic divisions between yeomen farmers and the elite planters.

Prior to the expansion of the economic market, yeomen farmers enjoyed a domestic economy that featured the family and the household as the central factors of farm production. Each individual household worked as a unit to produce a crop or other good; each member was responsible for a specific unit or task, and this collective effort produced the final result. Due to the hilly terrain and cooler climate in the Georgia Upcountry, most yeomen families specialized in food production and corn provided the principal crop for the farms. Food was grown to feed the household, and each family cultivated the proper amount that would comfortably supply the household<a name= “#1”><a href= “#1n”>1</a>. While the larger farms tended to produce surpluses that they could sell for a profit, yeomen focused concern on the family and its immediate needs, not the demands of the market.

The men of the households engaged in local transactions based on customs such as barter and credit that were free of economic standards or requirements that characterized the larger market. Courthouses often served as sites for local public sales where all the heads of households could meet and trade goods: in Carroll County, yeomen would meet on the first Tuesday of every month to attend such sales and trade crops, tools, or animals<a name= “ #2”><a href= “#2n”>2</a>. Settlements of accounts were rarely paid in full or in cash at the time of the transaction; instead, yeomen could pay each other back over a period of weeks, or even months. This symbolized the trust and cooperative relationship that dominated the yeomen community. Exchanging shoes for wheat, logs for corn, etc. exemplified the reliance on self- sufficiency and its influence on yeomen society<a name= “#3”><a href= “#3n”>3</a>. The yeomen expressed a labor theory of value that was discussed in class; the amount of effort that one farmer put forth in his production determines its worth and value. Each household worked under the assumption that his comrades equally labored to create a quality product for exchange whether it be farm tools, grains, or a healthy oxen or horse.

These farmers worked hard and usually managed to cultivate enough crops to sustain a healthy family and believed that their wealth was a direct result from the energy and labor. The community adhered to the value of independence and enjoyed a localized economy that lacked commercialization. They created a market based on community interest and self-worth, one absent of pressure to meet demands of a large and capitalist economy. Farmers were not burdened to produce a certain amount of grain or corn; by cultivating enough to maintain a happy household and a small surplus to engage in local trades, yeomen created a peaceful economic and social atmosphere. However, the desires of plantation owners and large farmers to economically expand by diversifying their crops instigated the dominance of the cotton economy that complicated the peaceful yeomen setting.

Cotton was routinely utilized in the South domestically, rather than commercially. Most farms did not produce the crop solely for profit, but created clothes for their families or slaves. Joyce Chaplain provides an excellent analysis on the factors that contributed to the explosion of cotton as a commercialized cash crop. Following the American Revolution, cotton production dramatically increased and the crop became a popular option to produce in conjunction with other crops<a name= “#4”><a href= “#4n”>4</a> Those farmers who had been producing cultivation before its surge continued to cultivate, but at an accelerated rate; others who focused on tobacco or corn as their chief products took great interest in cotton and considered incorporating its production into their schedules. The increase in cotton production also influenced the need for households to manufacture it into forms useful for making cloth, which required innovative technology. Wealthier plantation owners possessed the necessary finances to acquire these tools, such as power looms. In general, cotton was not a new crop; farms had been cultivating it, but in smaller amounts. Yeomen also provided a small number of households that produced cotton; however, most continued to focus on smaller quantities of food production<a name= “#5”><a href= “#5n”>5</a>.

Yeoman farmers in north Georgia initially opted to remain in the smaller market when cotton first swept the Southern economy; they chose to maintain their independence and lifestyles at their own discretions, rather than rely on others for profit. The households initially continued their independent production and enjoyed a diverse agriculture that was retained through their barter systems. Exchanging various crops such as wheat, corn and rice provided the Upcountry a financial shield that guarded them from the expanding economy on the national level. These communities contained all the necessities that the small farms required to sustain healthy and simple lives. Other yeoman farmers in neighboring Southern states also mirrored the economic structure of Georgian small farmers’ local market. John Schlotterbeck offers an informative analysis of yeomen in Virginia and reveals an identical community and market. The smaller farms also worked independently to engender a specialized cash crop and relied on their neighbors to provide other needed supplies and goods with peaceful trading. These local transactions also allowed a working network of relationships to develop among the townspeople that included blacksmiths, small shops, stores, and farmers<a name= “#6”><a href= “#6n”>6</a>. Thus, socializing in yeomen Virginia also emphasized trust and cooperation and established close social connections. Farmers spent their leisure time visiting each others’ homes and stores, hosting small dinners and teas, and attending church and picnics<a name= “#7”><a href= “#7n”>7</a>. The similar economies of north Georgia and other Southern states complemented and influenced the peaceful social relations of the yeomen farmers.

The simple economic environment that these yeomen farmers in the southern states had enjoyed started to unravel as the cotton economy continued to thrive and expand. As the demands for cotton consistently increased, food producers on smaller farms experienced a decline in the need for their crops. Steven Hahn studied yeomen life and revealed that they suffered dramatically lower yields of corn, oats, and other crops, as a result of sharing the same growing season as cotton<a name= “#8”><a href= “#8n”>8</a>. Households in north Georgia faced a complex choice regarding participation in the larger economy at the risk of the self-sufficiency and independence: households could boost their food productions or initiate cotton cultivation, or they could continue to fabricate the minimum quantities that maintained healthy homes, but acquired little profit<a name= “#9”><a href= “#9n”>9</a>. As surrounding plantations began to produce mass amounts of cotton, yeomen farmers unenthusiastically attempted to accelerate their individual outputs. However, these farms lacked mass production experience and machines; consequently, most farmers produced cotton at a significantly decreased rate compared to the larger plantations.

The lowered levels in demand for such crops brought competition with the growing economy and threatened the yeomen’s social environment. Many north Georgian yeomen farmers were forced to work in connection with larger plantations and their merchants in order to avoid food shortages. Intrusion of their local markets transformed the social relationships of the yeomen community, as the group recognized the reality that they would have to struggle to meet the demands of the capitalist market. Small farmers suppressed their values independence and self-sufficiency in order to labor according to the demands of a large market economy. Competition between fellow yeomen farmers and with larger plantation owners disrupted the pre-existing bonds of trust among the small farmers. The relaxed local economies of the Georgia Upcountry diminished and a commercialized business network dominated where strategic marketing and mass quantities of the product was essential to make money, and ultimately survive.

Consequently, many yeomen households developed a bitter and unhappy outlook on their situation and resented the success of the plantation elite. The large plantations succeeded at acquiring the desired outputs and accompanying wealth as a result of the higher yields of land and large and steady slave labor. Such factors allowed the elite to accelerate their productions and permitted them to quickly cultivate mass quantities of cotton or other commercialized crops. Class divisions grew increasingly distinct: plantation owners comprised the elite society, while yeomen consisted of the middle and working classes. Yeomen also found themselves living according to elitist work ethics; many would obtain additional acres of land and even acquire slave help in order to expand their production. Steven Hahn explains the how the cotton economy complicated the yeomen community’s preservation of their ideals: heads of these households rationalized that owning more property could secure their independence; yet, as the population grew, land values increased. In order to keep tracts of land, small farmers were forced to expand their cultivation. Such situations provided an ironic contradiction to the yeomen value of independence: to avoid dependent relationships with the plantation elite, small farmers participated in the cotton market and began competing with each other and the elite class and tried to overcome the struggles imposed by the expanding economy. <a name= “#10”><a href= “#10n”>10</a>However, yeomen crop yields repeatedly failed to match the mass quantities of the elite, maintaining their isolation as a lower social group.

Yeomen farmers were aware that they were becoming increasingly dependent on wealthy elites in the economic environment. The demanding need for more machines, innovative tools, and sometimes slave labor that would improve financial success placed the small farmers at the planters’ mercy. Yeomen accessed these necessities from elite planters that possessed the proper tools needed for mass production. The yeomen community lacked such technological innovations, thus amicable borrowing customs ceased to exist as an option. Thus, yeomen felt that they comprised an extension of elites’ labor and that their interests were being ignored. <a name= “#11”><a href= “#11n”>11</a> Wealthy planters exerted a great amount of control over the yeomen farmers, which contributed to their limitation from obtaining success in the expanding economy and the accompanying socio-economic status.

The exasperated yeomen farmers across the southern states petitioned state legislatures for increased representation in order to obtain political equality. Wealthy planters had a dominating presence in state governments, especially in Georgia, and had employed legislation to sustain their political power<a name= “#12”><a href= “#12n”>12</a>. Legislation provided an excellent forum for the wealthy to maintain their power. State legislatures during the antebellum period levied taxes, passed strict property definitions, and allotted budget money to construct the railroad lines that the yeomen farmers feared and despised<a name= “#13”><a href= “#13n”>13</a>. Yeomen did not share the same political views as the elite planters, but they lacked the needed legislative representation to garner change and prevent elites from attaining additional financial and political power. Thus, this controlling relationship that the elite held over the small farmers socially and economically limited the group and provided a plaguing reminder to the yeomen community of their struggle to adjust to the market expansion.

Ideological clashes between the elite and yeomen working classes further contributed to the tension that already existed as a result of the expanding economy’s uneven distribution of wealth. Chad Morgan’s study of antebellum economic development offers important evidence for this argument. Slavery exemplified one issue that placed the two classes in opposing positions. In general, slavery was very popular and a key tool for many Southern large farms. Slaves comprised a vital component to the plantation elite’s success; plantations that utilized slaves benefited from the increased manual labor that allowed the farms to cultivate larger quantities in a shorter amount of time. The rewarding earnings for the elite frustrated the yeomen farmers and they resented the elite because they lacked enjoyment of such benefits. Thus, a majority of yeomen farmers disagreed with slavery and viewed it as a contradiction to their independent values<a name= “#14”><a href= “#14n”>14</a>. Their labor theory of value emphasized their belief that wealth should be rewarded by effort, not at the expense of another group’s labor. Consequently, yeomen farmers who expressed this position found themselves socially isolated from the large elitist plantations all over the south, not just in north Georgia .

Railroad construction also offered a debatable issue for the elite and yeomen farmers. Prior to the expansion of the cotton economy, railroads existed in small numbers, which helped preserve the yeomen’s simple local trade. Once the economy boomed, elite plantation owners advocated construction of railroads that would make trade easier between states in the North and South .Hahn concluded that yeomen farmers opposed railroad construction because it would further expand the market that already complicated their economic and social customs by incorporating more parties in the market. The yeomen community desired to safeguard their personalized economy and avoid a reliance on commercialized merchants to dictate their earnings<a name= “#15”><a href= “#15n”>15</a>.The yeomen farmers’ intense value of social unity comprised the reasoning for opposing railroad construction. The issues of slavery and railroad construction effectively exemplify the ideological differences between elite plantation owner and yeomen farmers that formed the foundations of conflict between the two groups.

Class conflict persisted as a social problem in north Georgia, but intensified following the economic surge instigated by the shift to mass production. Mutuality among the yeomen farmers greatly diminished and many skilled craftsmen and farmers in the communities were shuffled into lower social ranks. Prior to market expansion, yeomen never contemplated the idea that they constituted a lower social class, they chose to live a simple and peaceful life free of economic constraints. However, the expansion of cotton introduced a new interpretation of class: failure to adjust to capitalism dictated your social status. Most yeomen farmers struggled to defend their economic independence and found themselves trapped in a web of competition. Small farmers could no longer enjoy the casual and pressure-free barters and trades, since their peers were consumed with a preoccupation to meet the raised strains of the new market. Class became a direct result of wealth, which sharply contrasted with the yeomen community’s former society of equality, cooperation, and mutuality. Those who were unable to meet the financial demands of the commercialized society were socially isolated and elite plantation owners viewed them with disdain.

Interaction between classes was rare because the groups lived in separate areas of towns. These communities developed sectional areas that were directly associated with and labeled by the class members. For example, in Athens, factory workers and poor farmers lived in one section, middle class tradesmen and merchants comprised another area, and the wealthy planters and merchants dwelled in their own districts<a name= “#16”><a href= “#16n”>16</a>.Members of each class remained within their geographical limits for socializing; a factory worker was not welcomed in the elite realm and vice versa. Lack of class interactions demonstrated the outcomes of the distinct social divisions. In Carroll County, small farmers comprised the community, which lacked an elaborate social society. Instead, its townspeople dwelled in log cabins and enjoyed simple forms of entertainment such as corn shucking or house-raising<a name= “#17”><a href= “#17n”>17</a>. Archibald Duke expressed in a letter his reservations for bringing his new wife to Carrollton in 1853: “I am sometimes fearful that you will not be pleased with the society in the up country…you will find all sorts of society here except aristocracy” <a name= “#18”><a href= “#18n”>18</a>. Burke’s letter effectively demonstrated the tendency of antebellum townspeople of associating wealth with social approval. In an article in the Athens newspaper, the Southern Banner, the editor published a letter from a visitor who recognized the sectional rivalries that had developed:

<blockquote>I was not pleased to hear remarks from various individuals which strongly savored invidious comparisons of different parts of town…to hear persons in one section speaking disparagingly of another section…I was sorry even to hear the terms “up town” and “lower townspeople”.<a name= “#19”><a href= “#19n”>19</a></blockquote>

The writer’s exasperation exemplified the preconceptions that each class towards each other; elite viewed the working class as an unworthy and degrading group. Middle and working class townspeople felt that the elite were arrogant and undeserving of their financial assets. The effects of the market expansion emphasized wealth as a symbol of success and financial status; the divisions between these social classes were direct results of the consequences of capitalism and competition. Yeomen farmers were regarded as a lower class because they could not economically compete with the elite. The examples from Carroll County and Athens verify the dominating presence class imposed on social relations in north Georgia.

The elite’s unfavorable view of the yeomen community influenced their criticism on the yeomen’s economic attempts to compete in the larger market. Elitists were rather eager to criticize the yeomen’s initial tendency to avoid participation in the expanding economy. They viewed the small farmers as lazy; their limited financial environment resulted from a lack of courage and failure to capitalize on their skills. Albon Chase, editor of the Southern Banner in 1839, published an article that exemplifies the elite’s disapproval of the working class:

<blockquote>My doctrine on this disputed point is simply this- That he who makes the best use of the means of information within his reach, need not fear but that in the end, he will make a respectable figure among his fellow-men<a name= “#20”><a href= “#20n”>20</a></blockquote>

Despite the yeomen’s increased effort to meet the ever-increasing demands of the socio- economic standards, they still could not prove their worth and integrity to elitists: “though ever busy, never accomplish any thing of the moment…and who, after a long life of bustle and perhaps real activity are very little in advance of the most sluggish and indolent” <a name= “#21”><a href= “#21n”>21</a>. Elitist plantation owners deemed that the strife of the yeomen was self-inflicted and that their economic situations were the result of their reluctance to adapt to the expanding economy and produce crops according to the changing demands.

The conflicts between the elite and working and middle classes in antebellum Georgia were exaggerated by the expansion of the cotton economy. The struggles of the yeomen placed them in a perpetual economic strife, plagued with the constant pressure to meet the growing demands of the commercialized economy. Georgia yeomen farmers were not alone in their financial struggles, small farms across the South found their peaceful social environments completely transformed or destroyed as a direct result of the economic pressures that accompanied the market expansion. The emerging tension between the social classes was inevitable as the elite continued to financially thrive, while the small farmers constantly endured economic difficulties while attempting to adjust to the new capitalist society. In Athens and other towns in North Georgia, yeomen farmers confronted negative criticism from elites and constant reminders of their low and unfavorable social status. Indeed, antagonisms between the social classes previously existed before the emergence of the cotton economy, but expanded and grew more severe until the brink of the Civil War. The intense effort employed by yeomen farmers fell victim to the consequences that the rapid commercialization of the cotton economy fostered.

<a name= “1n”><a href= “#1”>1.</a>David Weiman, “Farmers and the Market in Antebellum America: A View from the Georgia Upcountry”.

Journal of Economic History, 47, no. 3 (1991) 632.

<a name= “2n”><a href= “#2”>2.</a>James Calvin Bonner, Georgia’s Last Frontier: The Development of Carroll County. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1971), 27.

<a name= “3n”><a href= “#3”>3.</a>Steven Howard Hahn. “The Yeomanry of the Nonplantation South: Upper Piedmont Georgia, 1850-1860”. Burton, Orville and Robert McMath, Jr. Class, Conflict, and Consensus: Antebellum Southern Community Studies. (London: Greenwood Press, 1982), 34.

<a name= “4n”><a href= “#4”>4.</a>Joyce Chaplain, “Creating a Cotton South in Georgia and South Carolina, 1760-1815”, Journal of Southern History, 57, May 1991, 173.

<a name= “5n”><a href= “#5”>5.</a>Kenneth Coleman, A History of Georgia, (Athens: University of Georgia), 1977, 133

<a name= “6n”><a href= “#6”>6.</a>John Shlotterbeck, “The ‘Social Economy’ of an Upper South Community: Orange and Green Counties, Virginia, 1815-1860”, Class, Conflict, and Consensus: Antebellum Southern Community Studies,(London: Greenwood Press, 1982) 14

<a name= “7n”><a href= “#7”>7.</a>Schlotterbeck, 15

<a name= “8n”><a href= “#8”>8.</a>Steven Hahn, The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeomen farmers and Transformation of Georgia’s Upper Piedmont, (Yale University, 1979) 60

<a name= “9n”><a href= “#9”>9.</a>David Weiman, “Farmers and the Market in Antebellum America: A View from the Georgia Upcountry”, Journal of Economic History, 47, no. 3 (1987):646

<a name= “10n”><a href= “#10”>10.</a>Hahn, “Yeomanry of the Nonplantation South”, 36

<a name= “11n”><a href= “#11”>11.</a>Chaplin, 190

<a name= “12n”><a href= “#12”>12.</a>Chad Morgan, “Progressive Slaveholders: Planters, Intellectuals and Georgia’s Economic Development”, Georgia Historical Quarterly,86, no. 3 (2002) 401

<a name= “13n”><a href= “#13”>13.</a>Morgan, 401

<a name= “14n”><a href= “#14”>14.</a>Morgan, 401

<a name= “15n”><a href= “#15”>15.</a>Hahn, 33

<a name= “16n”><a href= “#16”>16.</a>Michael Gagnon, “The Milieu of Improvement in Athens”, Dissertation, Chapter 4,in PDF [CD-ROM] (Athens, GA)191

<a name= “17n”><a href= “#17”>17.</a>James Bonner, Georgia’s Last Frontier: The Development of Carroll County, (Athens:UGA Press, 1971) 74

<a name= “18n”><a href= “#18”>18.</a>Archibald Duke to Eugenia DuBignon. January 30, 1853. Bonner, 72

<a name= “19n”><a href= “#19”>19.</a>“Notice of Athens, GA in 1836”, Southern Banner, 15 October 1836, p.3

<a name= “20n”><a href= “#20”>20.</a>“Industry and Genius”, Southern Banner, 23 March 1839, p.1

<a name= “21n”><a href= “#21”>21.</a>“Industry” p.1