| Slavery was present in South Carolina before Charleston was even founded - but it was the trading of Native Americans enslaved by other Native Americans. The problem with buying a Native American slave for use around Charleston is that the slave was probably from the high-country and Charleston sits in the middle of low-country. The high-country Native Americans had the same health problem that the "indentured servants" from Ireland and Scotland had - they didn't carry the immunity to malaria that was necessary to work in the low-country.
That was, in part, what motivated South Carolinians to begin importing Africans to use as slaves. Along with the slaves came the first cash crop for South Carolina - rice. Africans also had the benefit (initially) of not being able to fade into existing society. The color of their skin marked them as a slave.
The second cash crop for South Carolina was - indigo. This crop easily fit into the extra land not being used for rice in the low-country.
Cotton was grown in the low-country, but it was a tertiary crop. It wasn't until the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 that cotton became a financially viable crop. Even then, it was in the high-country of South Carolina that the slave-plantations grew. Low-country cotton has a longer staple length - which means that you need more high-country cotton to make the same amount of cloth. Cotton plantation slavery was not centered in South Carolina.
There were cotton slave plantations around South Carolina, but if someone had just inherited money and wanted to be profitable, they wouldn't have moved into the low country to grow cotton. They would have moved to Charleston to grow rice and indigo - if they wanted to grow cotton they would have gone to the high-country (possibly Columbia).
There's also the problem of timing. If a cotton plantation was a good way to make money, then the cotton gin had been invented - which means that this assignment takes place between 1793 and 1865. Given the shifting sentiment against slavery, it is likely to have been earlier in the period than later. But the actual opportunities for a young person with money at that point in history would have been the opening of (progressively) Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi in the South or Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois in the North. Of course, there was also Tennessee and Kentucky to beckon.
Let's not forget railroad speculation, as well. Oh, and the Louisianna Purchase opened a ton of land for a young person with money.
In the time frame in which such an assignment must have happened, buying land and building a cotton plantation in the Charleston area would have been the least likely place and business combination for pursuing a fortune. So why would a history lesson teach so much wrong history and then ask someone to justify slavery? It doesn't take much to get that across and it doesn't take a "snappy slogan" to defend it.
But if we're going to use this approach, then let's use it across the board. Let's have our kids come up with a "snappy slogan" to defend giving the Plains Indians blankets contaminated with small pox. Maybe a bit later they can come up with a "snappy slogan" for siccing dogs on civil rights protestors. Then we can also have a "snappy slogan" for having the National Guard shoot Vietnam protesters at Kent State. How about a "snappy slogan" for bin Laden and his merry bunch of terrorists on 9/11?
Or maybe this whole assignment is just one level of offensiveness heaped on another. Maybe it has no educational benefit and it certainly isn't something that should be assigned to sixth graders. |
