PLANTATIONS

The term plantation originally referred to a colony or new settlement with a planned system of planting. Plantation in American culture gradually evolved to refer to an extensive agricultural enterprise based on slave labor. It would have been similar to a very large, often self-suffcient, farm.

The first plantations appeared in Virginia in the seventeenth century. Settlers began growing tobacco in the rich coastal plains where ocean tides swept up the rivers. Quickly, they realized bigger profits were possible by cultivating tobacco on a large scale. White indentured servants first provided the labor but soon gave way to black slavery. The great tobacco plantations became the hallmark of colonies in Virginia, Maryland, and the Upper South colony of North Carolina. By the 1720s, plantations appeared in South Carolina and Georgia. George Washington (1732–1799), Patrick Henry (1736–1799), Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), and James Madison (1751–1836) were among the planters.

The greatest expansion of the plantation system occurred between 1790 and 1860. It was spurred by a more efficient textile industry in New England and Britain's increased the demand for cotton. Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin enabled cotton to be cleaned and readied for market at a rapid pace. Cotton became so valuable that large areas of the "New South," including western Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas, were planted. By 1830 cotton accounted for half of all U.S. exports. Although small family farms worked by the owners grew most of the cotton, the great cotton plantation became the ideal of Southern society. The richest 10 percent of planters owned almost 65 percent of the farm wealth and dominated Southern political and social life as well. A planter was defined by the number of slaves owned rather than by acres owned. Only three percent of planters owned more than 20 slaves, but over 100 slaves worked the grandest plantations.

Typical Southern plantations were self sufficient communities with a mansion for the owner and his family, stables, kitchen, blacksmith shop, extensive gardens, and slave quarters. They encompassed thousands of acres of fertile land with access to waterways for shipping.

While most planters managed the plantation themselves, some hired overseers to help direct the slave workforce. Planters' wives were generally second in command supervising the entire household operation.

Slaves worked dawn to dusk in the fields. The more slaves a planter had the more productive his plantation. Emancipation of slaves at the conclusion of the American Civil War (1861–1865) brought the plantation era to a close.