Slavery And Freedom: An Interpretation Of The Old South

Slavery and the Old South are tied together like peas and carrots. The Antebellum South had a symbiotic relationship with slavery from its very onset. Starting with indentured servants it was then picked up by African blacks brought into the colonies by ship. The relationship with slavery was ingrained into the country side by the planters who used slaves to farm cash crops of tobacco and then cotton. This relationship along with southern nationalism eventually leads the newly formed nation into a bloody war that masqueraded as States rights battle, but really was about slavery. It is this fundamental relationship between slavery and the South that James Oakes explains in his book, Slavery and Freedom; An Interpretation of the Old South. Oakes takes us on a tour of his thoughts of the Old South and his fundamental reasons of why it all happened. The book does establish Oakes’ thoughts on not only slavery in the American South, but how it relates to

As indentured servants became scares it was more economic viable to buy slaves. “Free Virginians steadily acquainted themselves with the resources of the Atlantic, slave trade even as the tobacco plantations were developing.” This increase in slaves directly tied to tobacco crops, starts the South down the road to become a slave system nation. It is this slave system that is directly tied to capitalism and its flourish in the South. “But southern slave society emerged within rather than apart from the liberal capitalist world.” It is this emerging society that starts to feed on capitalism. Northern factories needed raw cotton; the South grew cotton for the North and Europe. Then the North sold the sundries, to the South, and beyond. It is this basic capitalist idea that made the South dependent on slavery. Slavery was the cheapest way to harvest cotton. So as the money flows, the planter makes a lot of money on the backs of