Edward Pessen, "How Different from Each Other Were the Antebellum North and South," American Historical Review 85 (1980): 1119-1149.
SYNOPSIS:
Pessen brings together a wide array of scholarship in this sweeping essay on whether the North and South were different on
the eve of the Civil War. He divides his analysis into three parts: economy, social structure, and politics and power.
In the section on economy Pessen argues that the regions were more complementary than opposed. Pessen carefully avoids explaining
"away" rather than explaining Southern industrial activity, though he argues that the South's high per capita rates of industrial
growth depended entirely on the fact of low white population. Pessen argues that social structures in the North and South
were similar in wealth distribution, vertical mobility rates, and lifestyles and fashions. Though similar, Pessen points
out, the sections "were not carbon copies of one another." The chief difference was slavery. In politics and political power
Pessen summarizes a range of quantitative studies of voting patterns and finds that in both sections leadership was conferred
on wealthy men and that parties were pragmatic engines of economic and social promotion. Even in the 1850s national parties
remained cohesive on all issues except those directly related to slavery and its expansion; moreover, he points out, most
issues of concern were local. On a whole range of indicators, Pessen summarizes literature that "appears to overturn the
traditional view of a distinctive antebellum South."
Pessen considers the low density of population a possible product of difference between the sections, not at all a historical
accident. Pessen suggests that striking similarities in the sections do not erase their visible differences, and that these
differences, especially those rooted in the social and daily life of communities, might have been decisive in overcoming the
ties of similarity.
EXCERPT:
"Southern whites, rural and urban, lived as did Northerners--in a stratified society marked by great inequalities in status,
material condition, and opportunity." (1136)
"The burden of recent research is that small social and economic elites exercised a degree of control over the most important
institutions in the antebellum North that bears close resemblance to the great power attributed to the great planter-slaveowners
by William E. Dodd a half century ago and by Eugene D. Genovese more recently." (1142)
"Far from being in any sense members of a colony or dependency on the North, the Southern upper classes enjoyed close ties
with the Northern capitalists who were, in a sense, their business partners. The South was an integral component of a wealthy
and dynamic national economy, no part of which conformed perfectly to a textbook definition of pure capitalism." (1147)
"That they were drawn into the most terrible of all American wars may have been due, as is often the case when great powers
fight, as much to their similarities as to their differences. The war owed more, I believe, to the inevitably opposed but
similarly selfish interests--or perceived interests--of North and South than to the differences in their cultures and institutions."
(1146)
"For all of their distinctiveness, the Old South and North were complementary elements in an American society that was everywhere
primarily rural, capitalistic, materialistic, and socially stratified, racially, ethnically, and religiously heterogeneous,
and stridently chauvinistic and expansionist--a society whose practice fell far short of, when it was not totally in conflict
with, its lofty theory." (1149)
"If the Southern rate of urban expansion still did not match the Northern quantitatively, Southern cities, old and new, were
qualitatively not unlike their Northern counterparts." (1133)
"Northern and Southern farmers increasingly specialized but in dissimilar crops. Tobacco and, above all, rice, sugar, and
cotton were largely unknown to the North. Yet in the South, as in the North, farmers--whether large or small--sought and,
for the most part achieved, self-sufficiency. They produced more grains and corn than anything else and in both sections
raised and kept domestic animals roughly equal in quantity and, it has recently been claimed, comparable in quality." (1122)
"What Stanley L. Engerman has said about Southern planters seems to apply equally well to Northern agriculturalists: they
were certainly not 'non-calculating individuals not concerned with money.'" (1122-1123)
"Evidence bearing on the conditions of white Northern as well as black Southern labor demonstrates that during the middle
decades of the nineteenth century the real wages of Northern workingmen declined and their living conditions remained bleak,
their job security was reduced, their skills increasingly devalued, and in many respects their lives became more insecure
and precarious." (1124)
"On the eve of the Civil War one-half of the free adult males in both the South and the North held less than 1 percent of
the real and personal property. In contrast the richest 1 percent owned 27 percent of the wealth. Turning from the remarkable
similarity in sectional patterns of wealthholding at the bottom and the very top, the richest 5 to 10 percent of property
owners controlled a somewhat greater share of the South's wealth, while what might be called the upper middle deciles (those
below the top tenth) held a slightly smaller share in the North. The South also came close to monopolizing wealthy counties,
the per capita wealth of which was $4,000 or more and, despite its smaller population, the South, according to the 1860 census,
contained almost two-thirds of those persons in the nation whose worth was at least $110,000. According to Lee Soltow, the
leading student of this evidence, these sectional disparities 'could be attributed almost entirely to slave values. . . .
If one could eliminate slave market value from the distribution of wealth in 1860 . . . , the inequality levels in the North
and South were similar.'"
RELATIONSHIP:
We agree with Pessen's comparative approach, of course. Augusta and Franklin were examples of the expansionist and successful,
rural and capitalistic American society of 1860 that Pessen emphasizes. On the other hand, we believe slavery created a self-understanding
among Southern whites that achieved political expression.
Points of Analysis to this Historiography:
"Chambersburg was a larger place than Staunton, but no more vibrant or connected to the market than its Southern counterpart."
"Franklin and Augusta exhibited different spatial organizations, with a more organized and commercial approach in Franklin
and a settlement in Augusta that followed the contours of soil and land more closely."
"On a per capita basis, Franklin farmers grew far less corn and more wheat than their counterparts in Augusta, and their commitment
to wheat was seen by many as both the symbol of the North's wealth and the evidence of its superior labor system."
"The richest farm households in Augusta, however, had a high correlation with relatively high wheat production and low corn
production, and slavery enabled even greater success on these farms."
"Although Franklin's wealth was concentrated in its rural agricultural commodities, the county was a commercial hub with numerous
businesses and shops more densely concentrated than its Southern counterpart."
"Franklin's wealth, like much of the North's, was located not in its cities and towns but in its rural agricultural land, where
its richest citizens depended on the movement and production of wheat, oats, and livestock."
"The Chambersburg newspapers sold a greater range of products than their counterparts in Staunton, and businesses there faced
greater competition as well."
"In Franklin and Augusta men who listed their occupation as a laborer or day laborer often did not own any property or wealth
at all. In Franklin these workers were more likely to have accumulated at least some property."
"Enslaved people were hired out to non-slaveholding farmers, railroad companies, and other businesses."
"In Augusta, almost every group of white people owned property and homes worth more than their counterparts in Franklin, most
of it tied inextricably to slavery."
"Black people enslaved in Augusta married, raised families, and worked at all sorts of jobs, but they were never far removed
from the tangled affairs of whites."
Citation: Key = H004
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