Land, Cotton and a Southern Identity
A minority owned, a leadership argued
- In the South, although the majority of Southerners owned no enslaved persons, most leaders argued that slavery was part of the Southern way of life.
- The CED puts a demographic fact and a political fact in one sentence, and they point different ways.
- So the defence of slavery was a leadership position, and the CED is careful to say the majority of Southerners were not slaveholders.
The CED says the majority of Southerners...
While most leaders argued slavery was part of the Southern way of life.
Staples, and a distinctive identity
- Southern business leaders continued to rely on the production and export of traditional agricultural staples, contributing to the growth of a distinctive Southern regional identity.
- Continued to rely is a continuity claim while the North was industrialising — divergence by staying the same.
- And the CED derives identity from economy, which is the mechanism 4.1's second thread predicted.
'Continued to rely on traditional staples' is a claim of...
Divergence by staying the same.
Soil exhaustion moved the institution west
- As overcultivation depleted arable land in the Southeast, slaveholders began relocating their plantations to more fertile lands west of the Appalachians, where the institution of slavery continued to grow.
- The CED gives an environmental cause for a political crisis: exhausted soil moved slavery into new territory.
- And 3.12's distinctive regional attitudes plus 4.3's Missouri Compromise are what that movement collides with.
A demographic or political fact, the economy, or the environmental push?
Sort each element of Southern development.
The environmental cause the CED gives is...
It forced the movement that made slavery a national question.
The CED gives an environmental cause for a political crisis. As overcultivation depleted arable land in the Southeast, slaveholders began relocating their plantations to more fertile lands west of the Appalachians — an institution that must expand to survive turns a regional practice into a national question.
Put the four steps of this subtopic in order.
Each is in the CED.
Geography as the objective's frame
- The objective is how geographic and environmental factors shaped the development of the South.
- Geographic: long growing seasons and fertile western land, which decide what can be produced where.
- Environmental: overcultivation depleting soil, which forces the movement that makes slavery a national question.
An institution that must expand to survive becomes ____'s problem.
The national consequence to end on.
Writing a regional development
- Give a geographic condition, the economy it supported, the identity that followed, and the movement that soil exhaustion forced.
- Four steps, and each is in the CED, which makes this one of the tidiest subtopics in the unit.
- End on the national consequence: an institution that must expand becomes everyone's problem.
A crop that exhausts the ground it grows in guarantees that whoever depends on it will need new ground. The need is agricultural; the consequence is that every new territory becomes a political question.
In the South, although the majority of Southerners owned no enslaved persons, most leaders argued that slavery was part of the Southern way of life. Southern business leaders continued to rely on the production and export of traditional agricultural staples, contributing to the growth of a distinctive Southern regional identity. As overcultivation depleted arable land in the Southeast, slaveholders began relocating their plantations to more fertile lands west of the Appalachians, where the institution of slavery continued to grow.