The Differences Slavery Made: A Close Analysis of Two American Communities
Return to Comparison Statements: Crops

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.

In the lowest two categories of household wealth, 44 percent devoted their farms to high levels of corn production, while in the highest two categories of household wealth 41 percent placed their farms in high levels of wheat production. Of 135 farms in high corn production, 36 percent owned slaves, and on these farms the mean number of slaves was almost 2. Poorer and middling corn farmers had access to enslaved labor; a significant percentage held enslaved people and many could hire them. Their crops were sold directly to staple-crop slaveholders in Augusta and other parts of the Valley and Virginia.

Augusta's heavy corn production was used to feed its enslaved and white population, as well as to satisfy the demands of over seventeen distilleries. Augusta's population could be estimated to consume 395,152 bushels in 1860, and the county's farmers produced 748,815 bushels. Augusta's seventeen distilleries processed 65,228 bushels of corn and produced $113,577 in whiskey. Franklin by contrast maintained just seven distilleries, more of which used rye, and produced just $53,215 in whiskey. Augusta's remaining surplus in corn, which can be estimated at nearly 280,000 bushels, was probably exported and used for seeding next year's crop.

In Augusta the farms in the highest quintile of farm value produced a crop value twice that of the next lowest quintile in both wheat and corn production. This leap was not evident at any other farm value in Augusta or Franklin. Augusta's slaveholders accomplished this jump without a significant expansion of the amount of land dedicated to a specific crop. These large farms' percentage of total grain in wheat and corn did not differ markedly from the middle and upper quintiles of farms. So, their productivity leap was a function not of crop difference but of large-scale slavery.

Augusta and Franklin were broadly representative of the border region and the counties contiguous to them in their average farm value and land value by acre. The differences between Augusta and Franklin are also evident along the border in sixty-one counties and between the counties bordering Augusta and Franklin. In both comparisons, the slaveholding Southern counties maintained a lower value per acre and a higher cash value of farms. This consistent pattern marked one of the defining differences between Northern and Southern communities.

Supporting Evidence

Acres of Farm Land, 1860 (graph)

Agricultural Production, Franklin and Augusta Counties, 1860, by Percentages (table)

Agricultural Productivity, Augusta and Franklin County, 1860 (table)

Cash Value of Farms Per Capita Comparison, 1850 and 1860 (graph)

Regional Comparison (table)

Slaveholders and Agricultural Productivity Correlations (table)

Slaveholders and Agricultural Productivity (table)

Slaveholders and Soil Quality (table)

Wheat and Corn Production by Household Wealth (table)

Wheat and Corn Production in Dollars (table)

Related Historiography

Randolph B. Campbell, "Planters and Plain Folk: Harrison County, Texas, as a Test Case, 1850-1860," Journal of Southern History XL (No. 3), (1974): 369-398.
Carville Earle, "A Staple Interpretation of Slavery and Free Labor," Geographical Review LXVIII (1978): 51-65.
Stanley L. Engerman, "Antebellum North and South in Comparative Perspective: A Discussion," American Historical Review 85 (1980): 1154-1160.
Sam Bowers Hilliard, Hog Meat and Hoecake: Food Supply in the Old South, 1840-1860 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1972).
Kenneth E. Koons and Warren R. Hofstra, ed., After the Backcountry: Rural Life in the Great Valley of Virginia, 1800-1900 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2000).
Kenneth W. Noe, Southwest Virginia's Railroad: Modernization and the Sectional Crisis (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994).
Edward Pessen, "How Different from Each Other Were the Antebellum North and South," American Historical Review 85 (1980): 1119-1149.
Harry L. Watson, Jacksonian Politics and Community Conflict: The Emergence of the Second American Party System in Cumberland County, North Carolina (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981).


Citation: Key = TAF18
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