Earlier in the chapter the plantation system of the New World
was described as a frontier zone in the development of the world
community. Within this zone, the plantation system of the Old
South evolved during the time that new frontiers were being cre-
ated from lands opened for settlement as agriculture spread south and
west. From Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, planters migrated
with their slaves to these newer frontiers to begin again the cultiva-
tion of staple crops, among which cotton took first place. They
pushed into Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, cut-
ting through the wilderness to clear land for cultivation. In this
process of plantation settlement, slave labor was indispensible. The
plantation and slavery were dependent on one another for the de-
velopment of the southern frontier.

Contrary to the thesis of Frederick Jackson Turner, the southern
frontier was not won for democracy. It was won for a slaveholding
society by slave labor, in a manner which was ruthless because of a
feverish struggle for wealth. There was a strong tradition of a sort
of democracy on the southern frontier. The movement of the
farmer, the overseer, or the self-made planter upward into the
planter class certainly illustrates this, and the process by which the
frontier was settled created a democratic atmosphere, as can be
seen in the log house of the wilderness, the physical discomforts, and
the lawlessness and disorder of new civilization. But Turner meant,
by democracy on the frontier, equality in wealth and social status,
political equality, and a consideration for the rights of man. On the
southern slave-holding frontier, these qualities were lacking unless,
while calling this democracy, we think only of the self-made
planter rubbing elbows with the landed aristocratic planter and
forget the millions of blacks, exploited and degraded in a state of
human bondage.

There were variations in the size and management of plantations
in the New World, and also in the treatment of slaves. Were the
conditions of slaves better or worse on the plantations of the southern
United States than on the plantations of Brazil and Spanish Amer-
ica? Two noted historians, Stanley M. Elkins and Frank Tannen-
baum, have made this comparison and have agreed that the slave of
Latin America, because of the influence of church and state, had
advantages which were unknown to the slave of the Old South. Ac-
cording to Elkins, the church guaranteed certain benefits to all
members baptized in its faith, and the state (Portuguese or Spanish)

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