Antebellum Southern Society: Whites

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Antebellum Southern SocietyWhites
Ante means before
Bellum means the war
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Southern Society in 1850
Slave-ocracy(plantation owners)
6,000,000
The Plain Folk(small slave-owners yeoman
farmers)
250,000
Black Freemen
3,200,000
Black Slaves
U.S. population in 1850 was 23,000,0009,500,000
lived in the South (40)
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Southern White Class Structure, 1860
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White Society in South

• Only a small percentage of whites owned large
  plantations
• Less than 1 of the white population owned 50
  slaves
• Most whites were yeomen farmers who supported
  slavery because they hired slaves or felt
  reassured that there was a lower class than them

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If these were the living conditions for slaves on
a plantation, what were conditions like on small
farms?
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Yeomen Farmers

• About 75 of Southern whites were small, yeoman
  farmers who did not own slaves
• Most yeomen resented the aristocratic planters
  but hoped to become wealthy planters
• Many saw slavery as a way of keeping blacks "in
  their place"
• Many saw abolition as a threat to their Southern
  way of life

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Antebellum Southern SocietySlaves
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Distribution of Slave Labor, 1850
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50 of all slaves lived in the Black Belt
(Cotton Belt)
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Slaves Workingin a Sugar-Boiling House, 1823
Some slaves could hire out their overtime hours
for pay (Underground Economy)
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Slave Families Community

• Normal family life was difficult
• Families were vulnerable to breakup by their
  masters
• On large plantations, slaves were able to retain
  their African cultures were mostly part of
  two-parent families
• But on smaller farms, extended families provided
  support or adoption of unrelated slaves

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A Slave Family
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Free Blacks in the Old South

• Southern free blacks were severely restricted
• Had to register with the state carry freedom
  papers
• Were excluded from certain jobs
• Subjected to re-enslavement fraudulent
  recapture
• By 1860 some states proposed laws to force free
  blacks to leave the state or be enslaved