Name:_____________________
SS7
Aim 7.5.1: How was the economy and the
geography of the South unique?
Date:__________
Haggerty
Objective: SWBAT recall the unique geographic factors of the
southern region of the United States and describe how these
factors led to social, agricultural and technological changes.
Do Now
Southeast
1. What geographic factors in the South made it ideal for agriculture?
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Read the following passage about the southern agriculture then, place the correct information in the graphic
organizer that follows.
The Economic Development of the South
As Jamestown was developing in Virginia, new groups of colonists began planning their move to America.
Some were Catholics, coming to Maryland to have religious freedom. More often, however, colonists were coming
to the South to make a profit.
The Southeastern region is known for its rich soil and long growing season. Although there are hills and
mountains, there is also plenty of flat land for planting. It rains frequently and the winters are not very cold. In
particular, tobacco, rice and indigo, were very profitable and were known as “cash crops.” Tobacco from Jamestown
was all the rage in England. But there was a problem. It takes hard fieldwork to grow tobacco, and Englishmen
were not anxious to work in the fields. Besides that, even the best farmers could tend only a limited number of
tobacco plants. So if you wanted to get rich by growing tobacco, you had to have people working for you. The
more people you had, the more tobacco you could grow. The more tobacco you
sold, the richer you would get. The colonists were so eager to have workers that
they were willing to pay for them. Sometimes they paid so much money that
ship’s captains would kidnap people from the streets of London, England.
Many of those who came to Virginia started out as indentured servants, and
usually they were very poor and wanted a new start in Jamestown. Some of them
were criminals who were let out of jail if they would agree to come to the colony. The indentured servants didn’t
have enough money to pay their boat fare (cost) to the New World. They had to work for the person who paid the
fare. They worked from four to seven years before they were free. That was their time of indenture. Indentured
servitude was very popular in the early colonies until the American Revolutionary War in 1775.
At first, there were enough people
willing to work on these farms.
However, as they grew larger, plantation
owners wanted to find a
cheaper way to plant and harvest their
crops. A Dutch ship brought
the first Africans to Virginia in 1619. Buying
a slave was cheaper than paying
for a laborer to work in the fields. Slavery
increased in the South
significantly as plantations increased.
By 1790, however, the use of slaves
had begun to decline.
Europeans were unwilling to pay high prices for tobacco and rice, which they could purchase more cheaply from
other British colonies. Cotton was a promising crop, but growers who experimented with it had a hard time making
a profit. Until some way was found to clean the seeds out of its fiber (the valuable part that was needed to make
cloth), cotton was of little value.
In 1793, a young Yale graduate named Eli Whitney had an idea. “If a machine could be invented that would
clean the cotton with speed… it would be a great thing to the country,” he wrote to his father. Whitney set to
work. Six months later, he had a working machine that would change the face of the South. Whitney’s cotton
engine, called the cotton gin for short, was a simple machine that used rotating combs to separate cotton fiber from
its seeds. Using a cotton gin, a single worker could clean as much cotton as 50 laborers working by hand.
Because of the cotton gin, planters across the South began growing more cotton. Within ten years, cotton
was the region’s most important crop, and it was making people rich. Within fifty years, sales of cotton overseas
earned more money than all other U.S. exports combined. Southern plantation owners were getting very wealthy
because of cotton; more plantations were created, and more and more slaves were put to work growing the “king
crop” of cotton. The invention of the cotton gin expanded slavery in the South, and ensured that an agriculturalbased economy would continue. With white southerners putting all their money into land and slaves, they had little
interest in building factories. They bought all luxuries and necessities from the North.
In the South, people and goods moved on rivers. The slow current and broad channels of southern rivers
made water travel easy and relatively cheap. On plantation docks, slaves loaded cotton bales directly onto steampowered riverboats, which became increasingly popular after 1807. The riverboats then traveled hundreds of miles
downstream to such port cities as Savannah, Georgia or Mobile, Alabama. West of the Appalachians, most cotton
moved down the Mississippi River, the mightiest of all the southern waterways. The cotton boom made New
Orleans, the port at the mouth of the Mississippi, one of the South’s biggest cities. Once the cotton reached the sea,
it was loaded onto sailing ships headed for ports in England or the North. Because river travel was the South’s main
form of transportation, most southern towns and cities sprang up along waterways. There was little need for roads
or canals to connect settlements and less use of railways in the south.
Agricultural Developments
Technological Developments
Social Developments
Fast Finishers:
1. Which of the following does NOT describe a common geographic feature of the South?
a) Warm climate
b) Thick forests
c) Frequent rains
d) Rich soil
2. The southern economy is based primarily on:
a) Commerce
b) Manufacturing
c) Bartering
d) Agriculture
3. The invention of which machine made cotton a profitable crop?
a) The cotton sifter
b) The cotton gin
c) The spinning loom
d) The steam engine
4. Which of the following best describes an important social change in the South that impacted the economy?
a) Southern planters switched from using indentured servants to slave labor
b) Southern planters switched from planting cotton to tobacco
c) Southern planters freed their slaves
d) Southern planters shared farm land with Native Americans
Timeline of the Southern Economy
1607
Colonists
arrive at
Jamestown to
make a profit.
Start farms to
product
tobacco,
indigo, and rice
Civil War
Begins