Hello and welcome to a history of the United States.

Episode 198, Not Yet the Dawn.

While we've had this pause in the narrative, at the onset of Jefferson's presidency,

one of the main themes has been reform.

Whether this was Jefferson wanting to limit the scope of the

federal government, whether it was John Marshall asserting the authority of the Supreme

Court, whether it was Priscilla Mason arguing for women's rights, whether it was

Null Webster expanding levels of education. Reform was in the air. And the greatest reform of all

was a radical notion that threatened to upend American society. Anti-slavery. At the time of the

American Revolution, it's estimated that there were about 860,000 African-American slaves, 20% of the total population, and mainly centered in the South.

The largest concentration was in Virginia, which held about 188,000, and the highest proportion was in South Carolina,

which was about 60% of the population.

The South was an agricultural economy, centred around the production of stable crops.

But it was not all the same. There were significant variations

in terms of what these societies looked like and how people lived. To get the point across,

we're going to look at these two specific areas, Virginia and South Carolina. If you think back to our early episodes when we

focused much attention on the Chesapeake, I'm sure tobacco is one of the first words

that will spring to mind. If you can remember that far back, you might remember one of

the key features of tobacco. It quickly exhausts

the soil. We talked about how this drove inland expansion, which by the age of Jefferson

was well underway, but it had a significant impact for the land left behind.

Don't get me wrong, Virginia had never been a tobacco monoculture,

...