To the website. If ive got that right ok. Thank you for your rapt attention this morning, i think you are in for more surprises this afternoon. Our first speaker is ed ayers. I feel like he needs no introduction to the Richmond Community but i will introduce him. He has received the National Humanities level from president obama at the white house and served as president of the organization of american historians and won the bancroft prize for distinguished writing in American History. He has served as the founding chair of the board of the American Civil War museum. He hosts the future of americas past, a Television Series that visits sites of memory and meets the people who keep those memories alive. He is the executive director of the new American History, and of course we all know him from a when we are driving around in our cars, as one of the American History guys. An online project design that has promoted the student in all of us to divide to dive into history and see it in new and unexpected ways. He is a University Professor and president america this at the university of richmond. Please welcome ed ayers. [applause] hello everybody. I see myself as a kind of change for the day. Weve had this wonderful talk from a former student Lindsay Robinson i want to claim that because its such a good job. Or gonna go back to and were gonna try to talk uncovered to try to integrate native history, african American History and white southern history in a way that is not usually done. We usually separate our histories out by tennessee rather than. Weaving them together. We will see how this works its all an experiment. I have not given this top before it makes me want to put my glass on so i can read whatever it. And we are going to cover all of this land. The one thing we have in common from millennia is the lines cape. These are the different soils of the south. Here is the thing, the south expanded with a speed and size few could have imagined in 1790. When lindsey started our stories. Three migrations created the south over the next 70 years. Millions of white farmers filling the expense larger than Continental Europe and millions of inflate people moving to plantations. The path of migration began from many sources, and many directions at the same time, and if we can trace those paths, we can see how these stories wove together. What we will see is that slavery defined much of what is happening in this story. Slavery concentrated on the richest land and yet spread everywhere in the south. Most white southerners did not own enslaved people and yet slavery went everywhere white settlers went. It benefited nonslaveholders little and yet it allowed the slave south to expand as fast as the north. This is what we have to figure out, how does the displacement and survival of native americans fit into this story . It is 1790. After centuries of continual conflict and change, Indigenous Peoples maintain a presence in every part of the southeast of north america, from the atlantic, to the gulf, to the plains. Some had been reduced to small and isolated groups, some had bound themselves with others to form alliances. Neighboring towns often spoke different languages, incorporating languages from europe and africa. They regularly communicated with each other, often across great distances on heavily traveled routes. The purple arrows its not that native people are waiting for white people to show up. They had their own history that is living and breathing and moving and going on, all of this still happening as the american is being fought. You have to keep everything in movement all along. And some of these people enslaved one another. They found ways to live amid loss and gain an threat from a growing and relentless population of spanish and english and french and then americans and with the pressures from the white settlers, the tensions in and among the native peoples grew more urgent. While some indigenous men and women embrace the ideas of private property and became christians, others defiantly embraced the older ways, more traditional ways of life. Mobility defined the lives of these folks, and increasingly they defined themselves in terms of sovereignty, in terms of territory and boundaries. Those are ideas that were created in tandem with the people who are moving onto their land. The cherokees, choctaws, chickasaw, and the seminole are the main folks we will focus on today. What we see is that the first settlement of the south began in kentucky, and here too let me show you how to read these new maps. I will just gesture over there. On the map, the varying shapes of blue are where people are decreasing. Areas of varying shades of brown are where people are increasing. You will see we have these broken down by different racial groups. This is white population change. The first decade of american nation. Poor virginia, you will see it is blue from beginning to end. People are fleeing virginia, and most of the white people are going to the north. Here in the first decade, it goes down the Shenandoah Valley into east tennessee, you hang a hard right up the road to central kentucky. This is the first frontier of the south. At the same time, this is the first decade of cotten expansion, they are moving into South Carolina. You will notice from the earlier talks weve had, this land is occupied by the cherokee, as you can see. But all of the lands that have diagonal lands on them are lands still in need of possession in 1790. This is the black population change at the same time. We will toggle back and forth. White people are not moving to the same places where they are taking enslaved people. Enslaved people are moving into the piedmont of virginia and what becomes georgia and South Carolina at the same time they are moving enslaved people into the bluegrass region of kentucky. In the next decade, you see how rapidly this is growing. This is where Andrew Jackson would be moving into as part of this bright pattern because he moves from west North Carolina into central tennessee. Central tennessee, like the bluegrass of kentucky, is rapidly growing. Look at georgia. What you are seeing is white people are moving up to the very boundary of cherokee land. They are pushing into it as hard as they can. Also in this first decade, they are moving to the Mississippi River and louisiana. We sometimes think of this as westward migration, but migration is moving in multiple directions at once. This is the black population change at the same time. What you will see is that black people are being concentrated, and this is the pattern we will see all along, where they are of use to white people. The train of enslaved people is relentless and it is very efficient. Down in natchez, mississippi, it had been a french town beginning to grow. This is the beginning of the sugar trade in louisiana. This has enormous consequences. You will also see upcountry South Carolina, and this helps explain some of the pressure on the cherokee, because they are living where the cotton kingdom is expanding. This is 1810, 1820. The black population change. No sooner do white people take black people into areas than they start moving them. You can also see now, look at southern alabama. We know this is occupied by native peoples, but already white people are taking black people into that area. Here is the thing to understand about all of this even while the laws lindsay is telling us about are being framed, white people are pushing, they are infiltrating lands owned by native peoples, and they are taking slavery with them wherever they go. This is 18101820. This is the decade that embraces the war of 1812, when interjection surges into prominence of Andrew Jackson, by freeing new orleans and taking millions and millions of acres of land from Indigenous People as a result of the war. Some of the native people ally with the british or the spanish as a way to protect themselves. When the americans win, they find they are forced into treaties you heard about the treaty of rabbit creek. It is a consequence. White people are moving into the upper south, the black population is far more concentrated in the plantation district. What we are talking about here, this is something that is happening globally. The creation of what is called a Settler Society. These are englishspeaking colonies, former colonies around the world. The idea is why people claim the right to take land from Indigenous People as a destined path toward civilization. It is a Settler Society because they are displacing native people through forced migration or death rather than incorporating them, as you might find in other colonial societies, like england and india. These settler societies, like australia, new zealand, canada, the United States depend on breakneck demographic growth. This is what underlies everything else. We talked in the first lecture from dr. Butterfield about the enormous doubling natural growth of the white population, but its also the case of the africanamerican population. In Slave Society, this is the only place where the Slave Society biologically reproduces itself. By 1808, the International Slave trade is closed, but the enormous slave population is in the south. It is unusual because you dont have to come from england or australia or new zealand. These are people generally moving within the south. Cheap land, valuable commodities, high profits, assumed racial and cultural superiority drove and justified the migrations of millions of English Speaking people in every hemisphere in the 19th century. The United States is an example of this, but here is the main difference for the south this is the only place where the white Settler Society possessed control over one third of the ethnicity to use in their expansion. All of those other places, white people displaced the Indigenous People, but in the American South, they displaced Indigenous People and brought slaves with them. It is a feverish growth and expansion, and a lot of the legal cases you heard about this morning. The American South is not the only Slave Society in the hemisphere. Jamaica, brazil, cuba, british guiana. But unlike those places where white settlers stayed on big plantations, here this is the only ruling class, and virginia is a great example of this, that uproots itself and recreates its society again. Most of the south is white southerners with or without enslaved people moving across the south and recreating the south. The south is completely unique, a different kind of combination. It has all of the energy of the american north, but the power of the enslaved population it controls. As we have seen and think about how short a period this is. People talk about the old south, but by the civil war, the south is about as old as subdivisions in chesterfield county. [laughter] look at how little of mississippi has been settled by white or black people, not to mention texas or arkansas. This idea of the old south, we can say it here, you heard from jamie about how old we are, but most of the south is not old at all but a product of this vast expansion. What you are seeing too is this is not just a result of the cotton gin. These people will find something to do with the slaves they control, whether it is sugar in louisiana or raising cattle in southern alabama. The main crop of kentucky and tennessee is livestock and hemp. This is not the cotton south. It has barely begun. The idea that it is cotton that causes it no, it is people who cause it. I am all fired up. [laughter] so what we see is that as this cotton frontier expands, this gives us a clear idea again, look at georgia. White people have brought black people to the very edge of the land they could claim. So there are treaties with the cherokee in georgia almost every four or five years as this pressure, and they take more and more of the land. A lot of times before it is taken, it is infiltrated. You have people coming and trying to finagle into the land, training illegally and so forth. You have this a enormous democratic pressure. If you go back to 1790 and remember how much of the land was occupied by native people, how rapidly it is that this map that i think is in every presentation, what the situation is by 1830. It sets up a lot of the scenes of the drama that lindsay told us about. Starting in the 1830s, this has not slowed down. You can see the cherokee being surrounded in every direction by the enslaved population from the south and coming from the east. But look at mississippi and alabama. The choctaw, the chickasaw. You can see western tennessee is being infiltrated by slavery as well. At the same time that all of the things we were talking about are happening to native peoples, slavery is driving this relentless push. This is white population change, and it shows you Something Else you can see them moving in in georgia. But look at them leaving upcountry South Carolina. Why . They have already used up the land. Look how fast this is happening. White people, no sooner are they settling in a place, look at the bluegrass of kentucky. 30 years ago they were settling that and now they are leaving and moving to places that are new. You have to picture we are living in the least mobile time in American History right now and our population is moving less than it ever has in American History. This is moving as fast as it ever does and we think about westward migration, look at how the south is being defined during all of this time. White people are moving and the richest of them are taking enslaved people with them. You have seen a version of this map before and you know the story, the 1830s, and how these folks are being driven from their homes. So to give some sense of the total numbers of this, in 1830, the native people still occupied about about 60,000 cherokees, chickasaws, choctaws and creeks live between the appalachian mounds in the Mississippi River and would not move willingly. The cherokee who occupied georgia, North Carolina and tennessee fought against white settlers and officeholders through legal means, inventing printed languages and newspapers, and often converted to christianity and instituted gender roles more like europeans. But white sellers in georgia repeatedly infringed on cherokee land in 1806, 1809, 1817, 1820 eight and 1829. At each step, the cherokee ceded land. Faced with such relentless pressure, some cherokees decided they would do better farther west, before removal. Some moved to arkansas, missouri and texas in the 1820s, but most held on in the 1820s. Andrew jackson, i assume this is an accurate quote build a fire under them, he told white georgians. When it gets hot enough, they will move. Settlers do not wait for land issues to be determined by law before they moved in. The 1830s culminated the displacement of Indigenous People who had already taken 100 million acres from them in the south. Most of the native people lived directly in the path of the richest cotton land. Why . They knew what the rich land was, they had their own farms, they were along the rivers that were necessary for the transportation of cotton. This is the growth of slavery in the 1830s. Look at virginia. Here is a remarkable fact, look at how many black people are being taken from throughout virginia, and yet virginia remains the largest slave state until the civil war. More people held in bondage here than anywhere else, but also more people sold out of virginia than anywhere else. One way to think about this is this would have been one of the most dangerous places to have lived in slavery because any day, your children could be sold from you. This voracious hunger of alabama and mississippi, and now look up and down the Mississippi River going over to louisiana. We also know that in louisiana, and you can see how densely it is burning down there, the sugar regions. They wanted young men. 90 of the men they would buy in virginia, 90 of the people they would buy would be male. The women they bought were girls, and as soon as they could possibly have babies, they would have children. Infant mortality was horrific. What do the dots mean . It means two million enslaved people were moved in the south in these decades. 2 million, americans moving other americans. You can see now how the displacement of the American Indians is tied to this voracious expansion of slavery and of the south. As the white population changed in the same decades, notice they are not the same. Most white people do not own slaves and cannot afford the land where the big slaveholders moved, and they take their 12 enslaved people and get the best land. You have to go somewhere else. You go to the upcountry, northern mississippi. Look at the result of all of this. As soon as native americans are driven away, white people are rushing in. You can see the abandonment of land they had occupied a few decades earlier. The patterns continue, expanding into texas after the war with mexico, into arkansas. Now South Carolina is taking back up again. 1850s, this is slavery at full peak. Look at how fast texas has filled in with enslaved people. So as we put all of these pictures together, look at how the upper south is being depleted of enslaved people. Why . They are being shipped