Introduction to the Documents

Reading the American Past: Printed Page 246

Documents from Reading the American Past

Chapter 13

Introduction to the Documents

I n most ways, slavery was king in the South, although white Southerners often claimed that cotton ruled. The southern states produced millions of pounds of cotton, but they also grew huge quantities of tobacco, rice, and sugar. Slaves provided most of the labor for these valuable crops, as well as being forced to do a wide variety of other tasks, ranging from cleaning house and minding children to building houses, sailing boats, managing the labor of other slaves, and even having sex forced upon them by whites. The following documents disclose some of the distinctive tensions that slavery generated among white and black Southerners and between the South and the North.