Hog Meat and Hoecake: Food Supply in the Old South, 1840-1860

8. Corn pone and light bread

8 Corn pone and light bread One of the most distinctive features of antebellum southern agriculture was the emphasis on crop production. The strong concentration on cash crops such as tobacco, cotton, rice and sugar is well known, but this preoccupation with field crops as opposed to livestock extended to the subsistence production as well. Most of the basic plants and animals common to American farms were found on farms and plantations of the South, but the importance of livestock relative to crops was much less than on American farms in general. Moreover,planters and farmers within the cotton belt favored clean-cultivated row crops over small grains. Furthermore , since livestock production was not an important commercial industry, there was a marked dearth of hay, forage crops, and improved pasture. Corn Introduced into American relatively early during the seventeenth century, the common European cereals were found on most farms during the antebellum period. However, the chief cereal of United States farmers was a New World domesticate, corn. Adopted quite early by English colonists in both New England and Virginia, in time it came to be one of the most important crops of farmers from New England to Georgia. Furthermore, it was especially well suited to frontier conditions and was retained as an important food for both man and his domestic animals as settlement moved west. By the time of the Civil War, corn was produced in every major agricultural region east of the Great Plains and, in most areas, was one of the two or three most important crops grown. By the end of the eighteenth century, the use of corn as hu150 Corn pone and light bread 151 man food had begun to decline in some parts of the country, but this was more than balanced by the growing demand for it as an animal feed. During the first decades of the nineteenth century, the northeastern states depended little upon corn for food, while the West, with more typical frontier characteristics, used it both for food and animal feed. But, by mid-century the West, too, was turning to other grains for bread, leaving more and more corn available for animal feed. In contrast, southerners retained the eating habits of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America by clinging to corn for food throughout the nineteenth century and, indeed, well into the twentieth. Corn was well suited to conditions in most of the South and was, beyond question, the most widely grown crop in the area.1 From the mountain valleys to the coast and from Virginia to Texas, it was grown on all sizes of landholdings and under a variety of conditions. Virtually every farmer produced corn for family use the year round and for stock during the heavy work season and winter. The planter (most having small to mediumsized operations) and his family had the same eating habits as the farmer and, in addition, had a larger labor force to be supplied . Thus, he planted corn in proportion to his needs. The importance of corn to each landholder varied with the location of his operation and his major crop emphasis. In some areas corn was slighted in favor of cotton or other food crops, while in others it was the dominant crop. U. B. Phillips felt that corn at least equaled cotton in acreage and, during the early years, exceeded it by about one third.2 This may represent a reasonable estimate for parts of the South but planters in southern Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi may have relied more on sweetpotatoes and other crops with corn acreage reduced accordingly. Conversely , operators located in the hill country and parts of the Carolinas grew much more corn. In fact, the ratio of corn to cotton varied considerably from one area to another within the South. Plantations located within the major cotton-producing areas showedmuch lowerratios than those on the periphery of the region.3 Moreover, small holdings within the cotton belt concentrated on cotton almost as markedly as did the planters. The census manuscripts indicate that landholding size was much less significant than location in determining corn/cotton ratios. For example, a sample of agriculturists in Baldwin County, Georgia 152 HOG MEAT AND HOECAKE (located 20 or 30 miles northeast of Macon; Milledgeville is the county seat) who produced both corn and cotton in 1850 revealed that only 8 percent planted more acres to corn than cotton, and among...