PETTY COMMODITY PRODUCTION IN THE COTTON SOUTH: UPCOUNTRY FARMERS IN THE GEORGIA COTTON ECONOMY, 1840 TO 1880

The analysis of Southern economic development has focused primarily on the Cotton Belt and has interpreted the expansion of staple production and the accumulation of slave wealth in this region as evidence that the antebellum Cotton South was a dynamic economy. Because of this emphasis, historians have ignored the large segment of white households, located on the periphery of the antebellum cotton economy in regions known as the Upcountry. Economically isolated, these households depended on self-sufficient production and the sale of surpluses for their reproduction and over time, evolved a traditional social milieu. By incorporating the Upcountry yeomanry into the analysis of the Cotton South, I demonstrate how the plantation system limited the economic development of these regions and as a result formed a dual economy.; I begin this investigation by examining the system of rural self-sufficiency in communities on the periphery of the commercial economy. This analysis situates these communities within the process of territorial and economic expansion in the antebellum United States and relates their distinct mode of agricultural production to the agrarian social structure of the rural population. Based on this framework, I explain the process of dual development in the antebellum Cotton South and, using the published statistics in the decennial census, trace out the regional pattern of development in Georgia between 1840 and 1860. I then examine the agrarian social structure and system of farming in two Upcountry counties based on a sample of households drawn from the 1860 manuscript census. This analysis distinguishes farm communities in the Upcountry and Cotton Belt in terms of the distribution of occupations and wealth among free households and the composition of farm output and pattern of commercial specialization among agricultural producers.; To conclude this argument, I analyze the transformation of the Georgia Upcountry during Reconstruction. With the formation of an internal marketing system in the Cotton South after the Civil War, Upcountry farmers were integrated into the national market and over time, became specialized, staple producers. These changes in Upcountry society, I argue, underpinned the Populist Revolt in this region during the 1890's.