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Mary Rowlandson was a Puritan woman whom Native American tribes captured and imprisoned for several weeks during King Philip’s War. After her release, she wrote The Narrative of the Captivity and the Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, which was published in 1682. The book was an immediate sensation that was reissued in multiple editions for over a century."But now, the next morning, I must turn my back upon the town, and travel with th

The Plantation Legend

the South was, in reality, a diverse and complex region

large parts of the South were unsuitable for plantation life

Unlike the slave societies of the Caribbean, which produced crops exclusively for export, the South devoted much of its energy to raising food and livestoc

Piedmont, Tidewater, coastal plain, piney woods, Delta, Appalachian Mountains, upcountry, and a fertile black belt--regions that clashed repeatedly over such political questions as debt relief, taxes, apportionment of representation, and internal improvements.

Large slaveholders were extremely rare. In 1860 only 11,000 Southerners, three-quarters of one percent of the white population owned more than 50 slaves; a mere 2,358 owned as many as 100 slaves. However, although large slaveholders were few in number, they owned most of the South’s slaves. Over half of all slaves lived on plantations with 20 or more slaves and a quarter lived on plantations with more than 50 slaves.

These slaveowners were a diverse lot. A few were African American, mulatto, or Native American; one-tenth were women; and more than one in ten worked as artisans, businesspeople, or merchants rather than as farmers or planters. Few led lives of leisure or refinement.

The average slaveowner lived in a log cabin rather than a mansion and was a farmer rather than a planter. The average holding varied between four and six slaves, and most slaveholders possessed no more than five.

The southern economy generated enormous wealth and was critical to the economic growth of the entire United States. Well over half of the richest 1 percent of Americans in 1860 lived in the South. Even more important, southern agriculture helped finance early 19th century American economic growth. Before the Civil War, the South grew 60 percent of the world’s cotton, provided over half of all U.S. export earnings, and furnished 70 percent of the cotton consumed by the British textile industry. Cotton exports paid for a substantial share of the capital and technology that laid the basis for America’s industrial revolution.

Wampanoag

Narragansett