CHAPTER V

THE SLAVE-HOLDER AND HIS NEIGHBOR

IN

(1830-1860)

N a region like the south, engaged in one main industry, and that the cultivation of a staple crop, with crude labor and appliances, a simple social organization might have been predicted. On the contrary, there was a remarkable complexity of social units, including at least five different strata of the white race. At the top of the social pyramid stood the slave-holder, for in the slave he possessed the one tool which produced a surplus, and he also owned the large areas of land upon which that tool could be employed. This privileged class was small ▾ in proportion to the whole population. Out of 12,500,000 persons in the slave-holding communities in 1860, only about 384,000 persons, or one in thirtythree, was a slave - holder. These figures, often quoted in arguments against slavery, are somewhat deceptive. Since the property of a family was commonly vested in a single person, the true proportion would be about 350,000 white families out of perhaps 1,800,000; leaving out of account the white moun

taineers, a fourth to a fifth of the white families in the slave-holding sections had a property interest in slaves. A counter-correction must now be made: about 77,000 owners had only one slave apiece, and 200,000 more owned less than ten slaves each; while only 2300 families owned as many as a hundred slaves. Samuel Hairston, of Virginia, the largest slave-owner of the time, had 1700 slaves and control of 1000 more.1

Out of 9,000,000 whites in 1860, certainly not more than 500,000 persons made a substantial profit out of slave-keeping; within that privileged number a body of about ten thousand families was the ruling south in economics, social and political life. The great names in southern public life, such as the Butlers, Barnwells, Hayneses, Brookses, Pinckneys, Rutledges, and Hamptons, of South Carolina; the Lees, Masons, Harrisons, Tylers, and Wises, of Virginia; the Polks, Breckinridges, and Claibornes, of the west, were borne by members of families holding from fifty slaves up. The Drayton mansion, near Charleston, the fine old houses of Athens, Georgia, and such stately abodes as the JohnsonIredell house at Edenton, still bear witness to a bygone generous life and profuse hospitality which impressed the visitor with the wealth and breeding of the south. Yet, outside of the southern cities and their neighborhood, large houses were few and

1 Chambers, Am. Slavery and Colour, 194.
2 Smedes, Memorials of a Southern Planter, 34.

a stately life difficult to maintain. The general tendency was to enlarge the large plantations by putting the profits of cotton, raised by slave labor, into more cotton lands requiring more slave hands; and this process prevented an accumulation of wealth in buildings and estates.

2

The well-to-do planters travelled widely and went to the cities in winter, and made the Virginia Springs, Newport, and Saratoga, ports of summer entry. Many of the lowland plantations were unhealthy a good part of the year, and their owners formed a small but recognized class of absentee landlords. Even in these cases the owner felt a personal responsibility for the plantation and its inhabitants. Though masters sometimes hired out the whole body of their slaves, corporations very rarely owned slaves, and in the few cases recorded, appear to have found the system unprofitable to them.

These great planters, everywhere accepted as the characteristic men of the south, were seconded by a far greater class of small, unprosperous, and unprogressive slave-holders. No writer saw so much of them as Olmsted, who gives us an unpleasant account of their poor houses, unwholesome food, and lack of comfort, thrift, and refinement. They lived

1 Martineau, Society in America, I., 216 et seq.; Page, The Negro, 168.

'Martineau, Society in America, I., 175-193; Featherstonhaugh, Excursion, chaps. ii.-v.

in groups of buildings still familiar to travellers in the south, a congeries of house, kitchen, servants' quarters, storehouses of various kinds, and stabling for the animals.' It seems unaccountable that, in a country abounding with vegetables and capable of growing many kinds of grain, people who were able to control ten, twenty, or more laborers should have been satisfied with the hog and hominy and discomfort of the frontier. In some cases they were restrained by the feeling expressed by a planter in Florida: "My old woman and I could be much more comfortable if we were not hampered by fifteen negroes, . . . but it would be such a distress and ruin of the poor things if we rid ourselves of them." " Such planters lived worse and had fewer opportunities for their children than many a day-laborer in the north; though occasionally you found "a perfectly charming little back woods farm house, good wife, supper and all."

Among the owners of one or more slaves were the professional men. Since white house-servants were almost unknown, it was necessary either to hire from slave-owners or to buy one's own cook or coachman. A slave was not an uncommon present to young people setting up housekeeping; many ministers were slave-holders, and Bishop Polk, of

'Olmsted, Back Country, 58-61; Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, 329, 384-386, 559-563; Murray, Letters, 229. 2 Murray, Letters, 229.

3 Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, 393.

Louisiana, owned about four hundred and was a notably good master. Clergy, lawyers, physicians, college professors, and the few scientific men were, for the most part, members of slave-holding families, and were completely identified with the great slave-holders in maintaining the institution.

In some parts of the south, notably the border states, existed a class of white farmers, working/ their own land and accepted as equal members of the community by the neighboring slave-holders; from such a family sprang Henry Clay. Some of them were the descendants of German settlers in the valley of Virginia;1 a few of them were northerners who had come across the border. Another class of whites who had little relation to slavery was a few laborers, mostly foreigners, found especially in the cities, though several travellers noticed Irish laborers working as deck - hands, or even in ditching operations. In a few cities, notably New Orleans and St. Louis, there was a permanent foreign population furnishing mechanics and small shop-keepers, and a few thousand poor whites were attracted into the cotton-mills."

The general attitude of the south was unfavorable to immigration, either from the north or from foreign countries. The whole state of North Carolina, in 1860, had but 3289 foreign-born residents; and,

1 See Paulding, Letters from the South, I., 91, 107. "Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States, 550, 612; Russell, My Diary North and South, I., 395. See chap. iv., above.