TIMELINE

1810s

  • Africans from Congo region influence black culture for decades

  • Natural increase produces surplus of slaves in Old South

  • Domestic slave trade expands, disrupting black family life

1812

  • Louisiana becomes a state, and its sugar output increases

1817

  • Mississippi becomes a state; Alabama follows (1819)

1820s

  • Free black population increases in North and South

  • Entrepreneurial planters in Cotton South turn to gang labor

  • Southern Methodists and Baptists become socially conservative

  • African Americans increasingly adopt Christian beliefs

1830s

  • Gentry in Old South adopt paternalistic ideology and argue that slavery is a “positive good”

  • Boom in cotton production

  • Percentage of slave-owning white families falls

  • Yeomen farm families retreat to hill country

  • Lawyers become influential in southern politics

1840s

  • Southern Whigs advocate economic diversification

  • Gradual emancipation completed in North

1850s

  • Cotton prices and production increase

  • Slave prices rise

  • Southern states subsidize railroads, but industry remains limited