Compare and contrast the slave experience in the upper South and the lower South.

By the nineteenth century, there were considerable differences between slavery in the upper South (Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky) and the Lower South (south of South Carolina and west to Texas). For one thing, the economy of this region tended to be more diversified, a trend that continued until the Civil War. Enslaved people worked on plantations that produced wheat, hemp, orchard fruit, and many other crops. In the Deep South, the economy was far more...

By the nineteenth century, there were considerable differences between slavery in the upper South (Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky) and the Lower South (south of South Carolina and west to Texas). For one thing, the economy of this region tended to be more diversified, a trend that continued until the Civil War. Enslaved people worked on plantations that produced wheat, hemp, orchard fruit, and many other crops. In the Deep South, the economy was far more oriented toward cotton, with some exceptions. These crops were somewhat less labor-intensive, but from a slave's perspective, they had longer growing seasons, which meant less time off. Moreover, as the cotton economy boomed, so did the value of field hands. So selling enslaved people southward became a major business in the Upper South. Over one million people are estimated to have been sold southward in this internal slave trade that ripped families apart even as it fueled the continued expansion of the cotton economy in the Deep South. As for points of comparison, the vast majority of enslaved people lived and worked in agriculture, and as the Civil War neared, more and more were the property of men who owned dozens of people. The misery of slavery was universal.