https://www.americanyawp.com/text/10-religion-and-reform/
https://www.americanyawp.com/text/11-the-cotton-revolution/
I think three important themes in chapters 10 and 11 were the changing landscape of religion, the establishment of cotton as being fundamental to the Southern economy, and slavery shaping Southern society and culture. Different denominations were rising and falling in popularity. The marked shift of more impassioned worship. Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian all grew in numbers. There was less emphasis on knowing theology inside and out. The Methodists were the best example of this. By 1850, Methodism was the most popular American denomination. At the end of the 18th century they had fewer than 1,000 members, yet by the mid-19th century they constituted 34% of people going to church.
The South was largely rural, relative to the North. The attitudes, dress, and culture of the South quite reflected this. Tobacco had been the South’s first major cash crop, but tobacco was difficult to grow. This was due to its sucking of nutrients out of the soil, which required fields to be moved every few years. The plant also required time and many laborers. Cotton was much simpler and was in great demand in America and Europe. The South prior to the Civil War didn’t develop industrial factories nearly to the extent that the North did. In the decades leading up to the Civil War, much of the South’s economic development was thanks to cotton. Cotton needed laborers (slaves) to work the fields, so the two were closely intertwined. This is highly significant because the North had an economy that discouraged slavery, while the South had an economic system that encouraged it. The attitudes of a highly rural population shaped Southern culture. Honor and religious observation are a couple of cultural traits of the South. Violence and roughness were as well. The cities did grow, they just grew (mostly) for different reasons than in the North.
