1. Southern Agriculture

2. Fact:
The basic and historic industry in the South has been agriculture. This fact has had an enormous bearing on the development of a distinctive regional culture and economy.

3. Native Americans
Began practicing agriculture approx. 5,000 – 10,000 years ago
Developed large communities; Cahokia, Illinois pop. 8,000 – 40,000; Moundville, Alabama pop. 1,000 – 10,000
Grew corn, squash, pumpkins, several varieties of beans, tobacco

4. The Colonial South
Jamestown, Chesapeake settlements began cultivating tobacco very early
Virginia, Maryland, Delaware
Indentured servants
Other cash crops included wheat, corn, hemp, flax, rice, sugar cane, cotton

5. Fact:
Land was the necessary foundation for prosperity in the colonial South.
Ownership of land meant voting rights, standing in the community, a greater degree of control over one’s destiny

6. Virginia’s slave laws of the mid/late 1600s Bacon’s Rebellion, 1676
Decrease in indentured servants
Increased demand for African slaves
Yeoman farmers opened up the frontier

7. Cattle ranching developed in Georgia
Sea Island (long staple) cotton vs. upland (short staple) cotton
Planters diversify: wheat, corn, oats, barley planted along with tobacco

8. The Antebellum Period Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, 1793
Increased global demand for cotton
New England textile mills
Indian Removal Act, 1830

9. Increased demand for slaves
International slave trade banned by Congress, 1808
Cotton became dominant crop of Southern planters, farmers; “Cotton is King”
Cotton became nation’s number one export

10. The Civil War
Dependent on exporting cotton, South’s economy devastated by Union blockade
South focused on feeding military
Many yeoman farmers in army
Livestock consumed by military

11. Reconstruction 3-4 million slaves freed; most stayed on land; farmed
Sharecropping became widespread—black and white
Livestock never recovered
Cotton remained number one crop

12. The 20th Century
Boll weevil arrived from Mexico c in TX, in GA by 1920s
Depression of 1921
Great Depression ( )
Dust Bowl

13. Mechanization displaced many sharecroppers
Rise of agribusiness
Farmers’ Co-op
Fewer, larger farms grow diverse crops
Soybeans introduced, become popular