By 1800
the number of slaves increased by seventy per cent., and formed nearly
one-fourth of the gross; in the following decade they increased by ninety
per cent., until they comprised one-third of the whole; from 1810 to 1820
their number grew at the smaller rate of fifty per cent, and reached
two-fifths of the whole; and by 1830, with a further increase of forty per
cent., the number of slaves almost overtook that of the whites. The slaves
were then counted at 101,982, the whites at 115,318, and the free negroes
at 2,115. In Georgia the slave proportion grew more rapidly than this
because it was much smaller at the outset; in North Carolina, on the
other hand, the rise was less marked because cotton never throve there so
greatly.
In its industrial requirements cotton was much closer to tobacco than to
rice or sugar. There was no vital need for large units of production. On
soils of the same quality the farmer with a single plow, if his family did
the hoeing and picking, was on a similar footing with the greatest planter
as to the output per hand, and in similar case as to cost of production per
bale. The scale of cotton-belt slaveholdings rose not because free labor
was unsuited to the industry but because slaveholders from the outside
moved in to share the opportunity and because every prospering
non-slaveholder and small slaveholder was eager to enlarge his personal
scale of operations.
Pages:
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294