Understanding White Society in the Old South: Slave Ownership and Political Power

welcome to lesson 3b white society in the old south so some of the major questions that we

will be covering in this lecture how common was slave ownership among southern whites uh we'll talk about how

ten thousand families dominated all of southern politics and then finally we'll discuss why

non-slave holding whites uh white southerners supported slavery so it's important when we're having this

conversation to understand you know why the south was changing right we've the book talks about um how in the north you

know embraces industrialization there's going to be a lot more immigration into these areas because

people are looking for wage labor work but the economy of the south at this time obviously

is uh kind of crystallizing around this idea of plantation agriculture and instead of using free wage labor like

they do in the north using enslaved african americans as the primary labor force

so this is going to cause a lot of divergence between the north and the south economically

politically as well as culturally so what did things look like in the

south well when we look at the southern population some generalities right to understand

the border states the border states are those states uh tennessee kentucky that had slavery closer in the northern part

more mountainous by and large these states had a lower population of slaves

compared to the states in the deep south right where the plantation where the land was flatter the land was more

fertile more suitable toward plantation agriculture so the border states have a lower population of slaves

than in the deep south and that brings us to the demography of the south right

33 percent of the people who lived in the south were enslaved enslaved african-americans

the percentage of white people or 42 percent of the population were white people who didn't own slaves and

25 percent of the overall population of the south were white slave holders so when you break down then the white uh

slave owning population in the 1850s and you kind of see that in this image here uh you have people who of the white

population who didn't own slaves was 64 people who owned more than 50 slaves uh was 2.5 so those would be the largest of

the plantation owners or the people who own this 2.5 percent people who had less than five slaves were eighteen percent

of the population and then between five and fifty slaves was fifteen point five uh percent

so by 1860 75 of white southerners did not own any slaves so that brings us to this question if such a large percentage

of the southern population did not own slaves how did 10 000 families come to dominate

the entire political system there's ten thousand families who were part of this two point five percent of large slave

owners for the most part well the thing to understand about politics in the south is that the system

was rigged toward the planters uh the plantation owners had power or held power that was disproportionate to

their percentage of the population so where they hold almost 100 percent of the power right it's important to

understand that slave owners were only 25 of the entire southern population right and you know really 40

of the white population and basically what these planters did is they uh have complete command not only

over the slaves on their plantation as well as their families but also they had an inordinate amount of influence in the

communities that they lived in as well as the state governments of their

individual states and with that power what they did is they passed a lot of legislation that

favored their interests for example they would pass slave codes or black codes which were designed to impose laws that

would bring control over the slaves things like fugitive slave laws pass laws meaning that if a slave was

not on their plantation and was away they had to have a written pass from their owner giving them permission to be

away or else they could be accused of being a runaway and these slave owners also would pass

laws to control white people for example in the state of georgia if you were taught uh caught teaching a slave uh how

to read you could be whipped and fined um if you were caught publishing quote unquote incendiary documents that was a

capital crime um and an incendiary document at this time would be something like

pro-abolitionist literature right that was a capital crime uh there is

also zero tolerance for any sort of anti-slavery ideology the fear being that if um abolitionist material

anti-slavery ideology made it into the common discourse of the south that that could inspire slaves

embolden them to create some sort of a widespread slave rebellion so what about white people who rose

economically without the help of slavery um well you have this upward economic

mobility right this or the the possibility of upward economic mobility essentially um you know smaller

uh smaller whites who rose economically during this time were bribed by the

slave owners with money and land right people who spoke out against slavery would be ostracized

so the combination of those two factors kind of helped gain compliance of upwardly mobile whites who did not own

slaves themselves so let's talk more about the system right

the way that southern slave owners dominated the political system one

another thing in addition to legislation that favored them they also created a tax code that was favorable to them

planters didn't care about internal improvements right they were only worried about getting their cotton to

the market so things like education were not funded in fact there were no public school systems in the south until

after the civil war compare that to the north where you have this growth of a market economy you need

educated workers to be able to perpetuate that economic economy or that market

economy so that led to the creation of public schools in the north but not in the

south in the south obviously because there's minimal amount of industrialization it's

a farm-based economy not as much need for formal public education in the south there's also little

emphasis on infrastructure things like roads bridges canals railroads

the only internal improvements that were made were improvements that would benefit the cotton industry and all you

have to do for proof is look at these two maps you see the map on the left represents canals and roads

you can kind of see there's a much greater concentration of canals uh in the north despite the fact that there

are rivers all over the south that would have been conducive to canal building

as well as roads not a lot of roads in the south only really between the major uh cities

um and a lot of that had to do with uh the way that the economy developed right internal improvements only benefit the

cotton industry same thing with the railroads in that picture on the right you also have a system of regressive

taxation right so planners you know because they're not paying for internal improvements there's

not a large need for a lot of taxes in the south but they did establish a system a tax

code that was favorable to them using what we know as regressive taxation so in a progressive tax kind of like our

modern tax code according to a progressive tax the more money you make the higher percentage you

pay in taxes under regressive taxation people who earn the least amount wind up paying the

largest burden of the taxes so half of state tax revenue in the south came on taxes on slaves

however the tax on slaves was only one-fifth of the amount of the tax levied on land

so if you think about a farmer who didn't own slaves right they paid a much larger tax on the

amount of land that they owed than a slave owner would pay on their own tax on their own

slaves planters paid 14 times more in taxes on the average than lower class whites but

their land and slaves were worth 54 times more than a farmer's land so farmland that was just being used to

grow crops like corn wheat and other kinds of food stuffs or used for animal husbandry cattle

raising livestock etc that land was 50 four times less valuable than land that was used to

plant uh cotton right as well as the slaves who were harvesting it so the tax rate on planters uh the

income tax rate uh in many southern states on average was 2.6 the tax rate on a farmer was 10

so why is this significant why is it significant to understand this system of regressive taxation

well what it does is it places a tax burden on non-slave holding whites uh then they bear more of a burden than

planters right so again plantation owners are the ones controlling the political system

passing laws that favor their own financial interests so to summarize right this if you think

about all these reasons there are a lot of reasons that non-slave-holding whites should not support slavery

there are few opportunities for jobs outside of farming right there wasn't a lot of industrialization so not a lot of

wage labor work they pay higher taxes than the plantation owners and there's not a lot

of available land if land was flat if it was fertile um chances are it would be bought up at a

premium by a slave owner or somebody who is aspiring to become a plantation owner so

there wasn't a lot of available land for people especially in the deep south who just wanted to be a small farmer right

so there's a lot of reasons why that you would think one would imagine that non-slave holding whites

would not support slavery so why did non-slave-holding whites support slavery

well there are a number of different reasons that we'll talk about here to finish

this lecture first group we want to talk about are low country yeoman right well it's here's me forgetting to do the

slides again right low country human here we go so low country yeoman are small farmers

who live in plantation country but don't own slaves right so when you think about the low country think about like the

around the coastal areas of south carolina or central georgia right they live

around a lot of other plantations but their farms are small to the point that they don't own slaves

they typically the lowcountry yeoman would grow cotton but only a small amount of it and they support slavery

because they aspired to join the slave owning class one day right they benefit um

you know from slavery because of paternalism right so they they don't want to pass restrictions because they

hope to become slave owners themselves and then they also benefit from slavery due to

paternalism plantation owners would allow these small farmers to use their cotton gin

they would also lend slaves to them during the harvest season or during planting season uh they would lend money

to these lowcountry yeoman when they needed it and plantation owners would often help

small farmers transport their cotton bales to market sometimes transporting them free of cost

as a kindliness as a service to them but again it's to essentially buy their compliance right so that's the

low country yeoman the next group we want to talk about are the upcountry yeoman and the upcountry

yeoman live in the mountains right in areas where plantation crops do not grow well and if

you kind of look at this image here on the screen you can kind of see the lowest concentration of enslaved uh

laborers was right here right right through the appalachian mountains right so these this is the up country right um

plantation crops because it's so hilly they don't grow well there and that leads to a lower slave population

or alternatively if the land was good for growing those crops perhaps it's so isolated that it was difficult to take

large quantities to transport that to market not only that but cotton itself is very

labor intensive so it's risky to grow cotton on a small scale without slaves or without access to borrowed slave

labor like the low country omen could take advantage of so in these areas of appalachia

you have small farms very few slaves most of the agriculture in this area is subsistence farming meaning somebody's

growing a small patch of soybeans or corn or whatever the case may be enough to support their own family and just

have a little small surplus left over so how does slavery benefit the upcountry yeoman

well basically what they would do as i mentioned before any kind of excess foodstuffs that they would grow on their

farms they could sell to the plantations in order to feed slaves and they also had this

affinity for isolation right so they kind of had a deal with large plantation owners that if you

leave us alone we'll leave you alone the people who lived in these areas they

did not want to be part of the market economy right it was a very conservative area they liked

their the insular nature of the area there wasn't a lot of outsiders coming in

so getting involved building roads uh other infrastructure into these areas would bring new people in right

increased contact with the outside they felt would fundamentally change the area and the culture of the area

uh so they don't support internal improvements they want to be left out of the market economy and

as long as slave owners agreed to leave them out of it they agreed to not mess with slavery

so that brings us to our final group right poor whites right so poor whites essentially refers to families that did

not own land and this was 25 of uh the southern white population right that didn't own slaves um so 25

percent of that 64 percent of southern whites who didn't own slaves 25 percent of that group were landless

they usually worked as tenant farmers on somebody else's land or they could work as unskilled laborers

working as overseers on plantations right earning wages but very few as i mentioned before

very few opportunities for wage labor in the south and these tenant farmers these poor

whites uh they lived a brutally poor existence they were uneducated they were often malnourished um very susceptible

to disease because of the conditions that they lived in and in many ways they lived in ways very similar to the

conditions that enslaved workers lived in so why does slavery benefit poor whites

well slavery benefits them because of this idea of white supremacy right that no matter how bad the situation is for a

poor white person at least they're better off than in enslaved workers right they still have a relative freedom

to make moves to move around to do what they want

so they're better off than than african americans at this time who were enslaved

and if slaves were emancipated this would be a threat because there was this belief that emancipating a bunch of

slaves would lead to an increase in competition for the limited number of jobs that there were available

and this was a deliberate action taken by plantation owners right because the there would be a danger if you have 33

percent of the southern population is enslaved and then you know another significant portion poor whites who

really don't benefit at all from slavery or the economy if those two groups were to get together and create a

socio-economic alliance because they shared so much in common that could be a threat to the power political power of

plantation owners and that is the reason why they used white supremacy also what was

known as the mudsil theory right this idea that no matter how low in life a white person gets they could not sink to

the level of someone who was enslaved so that's all for this lecture thanks

for listening and we will talk to you soon