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Poor Whites in the Antebellum US South H-Slavery Poor Whites in the Antebellum U.S. South (Topical Guide) Page published by David Prior on Monday, July 29, 2019 Jeffrey Glossner of the University of Mississippi offers H-Slavery the most recent in a series of topical guides concerning the study of slavery. A preliminary draft circulated to the subscribers of H-Slavery for feedback on July 12, 2019 (available here). We thank Dr. Kars for her comment. This revised version was published on July 29, 2019. Poor Whites in the Antebellum U.S. South Jeffrey Glossner University of Mississippi Introduction As a topic of historical analysis, the poor whites of the antebellum U.S. South have received little sustained interest despite being a significant portion of southern society and a presence that loomed over the North-South sectional crisis over slavery. Historians, at times, have pointed to white supremacy to explain the lack of poor white resistance to the slave labor system and the absence of a class consciousness that united southern laborers across the color line. Despite deep economic divisions among southern whites, the lack of a poor white voice in the historical record has led historians to downplay their influence on society. Yet, historians have located a distinct class of landless poor white people who constituted a political and social problem to the ruling class of the antebellum South, giving pause to the tendency to lump white southerners into a homogeneous whole. The southern poor white also has a complex history as an idea, appearing as an internal threat to the stability of the South and a rhetorical weapon wielded by antislavery northerners. Elite southerners justified slavery as a social system that elevated all whites above black enslaved laborers. Therefore, the presence of a large class of poor white people in the South created a fundamental problem for the southern ruling class as it sought to shore up slavery in the face of antislavery attacks. Samuel C. Hyde Jr., in his historiographical essay on “non-elite southerners,” observed that historians, as of 2002, had thus far failed to concretely define the difference between groups of white southerners (Hyde Jr., 2002). Recent work, though, is pushing us towards a more nuanced view of these people, finding that deep class divisions were reflected in racial, gender, and political ideology as well as in cultural images. Poor southern whites continue to be an under-analyzed Citation: David Prior. Poor Whites in the Antebellum U.S. South (Topical Guide). H-Slavery. 08-24-2019. https://networks.h-net.org/node/11465/pages/4372893/poor-whites-antebellum-us-south-topical-guide Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Slavery population of the antebellum South, but, increasingly, historians have found them to be an important and revealing class that can be used to illuminate underlying tensions related to race and class in this critical period. Readers interested the topics addressed here should also see Hyde’s essay along with David Brown’s article (2013) and the introduction to Keri Leigh Merritt’s recent book,Masterless Men (2017). Plain Folk and Poor Whites The earliest academic work on antebellum poor white southerners downplayed their social significance and argued they did not oppose the slave labor system because of their racism. These historians saw poor whites as a large and distinct class that posed challenges for southern elites but found that elites were able to persuade them into supporting slavery through the promise of privilege under white supremacy (Buck, 1925; Craven, 1930; Phillips, 1929). In contrast, Frank Owsley, in his Plain Folk of the Old South (1949) argued that the vast majority of non-slave owners were not “poor white trash” but landowning self-sufficient farmers. These “plain folk” did not resent the planter class but looked up to them as examples of what they could become. A common southern culture united the plain folk and they were relatively happy with their lot amongst the bounty that southern life provided. Owsley’s work set the stage for a historiographical undertaking to illuminate the “average” southerner, an effort that largely downplayed the importance of class differences and thusly the importance of poor whites to the antebellum South. Historians would continue to argue that southern white society was far more united by their common cultural and religious heritage than divided by their class differences. Eugene Genovese, for example, argued that racial hegemony convinced non-slave owners at large to adopt the social ethos of the planter aristocracy (Genovese, 1975). Other historians found deep economic inequality and resentment of the planter class but continued to adhere to Owsley’s plain folk thesis. Bruce Collins argued that the agricultural abundance of the South mitigated the suffering of the poor and allowed for social bonding between different classes of whites (Collins, 1985). Similarly, William J. Harris stressed an agrarian based republican ideal of white supremacy that united the vast majority of whites in defense of slavery (Harris, 1985). Bill Cecil-Fronsman found that poor whites and non-slave owners in North Carolina often clashed with the planter elite, but that racial hegemony diffused class conflict and diverted poor white energies toward conflict with enslaved blacks (Cecil-Fronsman, 1992). The plain folk thesis presented non-elite Citation: David Prior. Poor Whites in the Antebellum U.S. South (Topical Guide). H-Slavery. 08-24-2019. https://networks.h-net.org/node/11465/pages/4372893/poor-whites-antebellum-us-south-topical-guide Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 2 H-Slavery white southerners as a largely homogeneous and harmonious group, which in turn resulted in the downplaying of class as an important framework by which to view southern antebellum society. The study of poor white interaction with enslaved blacks has provided one way for historians to illuminate the tensions that the presence of poor whites created. Craven found that the lifestyles of poor whites and slaves were similar and that poor whites participated in a biracial alcohol trade that created significant anxiety among slave owners (Craven, 1930). Later, Genovese highlighted how slaves held poor whites in contempt despite their interactions. Slaves perceived poor whites to be of a lower social status than other white southerners and often expressed a perception that they themselves were more respected than lower-class whites (Genovese, 1977). More recently, Timothy J. Lockley claimed that grouping white southerners together has led historians to overlook a more complex understanding of racial prejudice in which some non-slave owning whites often found personal interest in cooperation and alliance with black southerners (Lockely, 2001). Jeff Forret has similarly argued that the ways that slaves and poor whites interacted did not reflect a rigidly enforced racial hierarchy or social structure. Southern elites were very concerned with such interaction, especially in the late-antebellum period as they sought to shore up slavery and unite white southerners under the banner of white supremacy (Forret, 2006). The specter of slave insurrection added another element of elite fear to these interactions. Whether real or imagined, elite southerners believed that poor white meddling with enslaved blacks was a main cause of slave disloyalty and rebellion. Laurence Shore observed that the specter of rebellion exacerbated class tensions by forcing slave owners to contemplate the loyalty of non-slave owners to protect the slave system. Shore, and later Joshua D. Rothman, placed anxieties about poor white and slave interaction at the center of an insurrectionary panic that swept Mississippi in 1835 (Shore, 1982). For Rothman, these anxieties reflected the instability and social divisions of a slave society in the midst of a speculative cotton boom (Rothman, 2012). As the plain folk thesis began to break down, historians started to explore the lives of poor southern whites in a more earnest and systematic way. In Poor Whites of the Antebellum South (1994), Charles Bolton defined poor whites as landless white tenants and laborers who had little to no property and found this group to be numerous and distinct from the landowning yeomen middle-class. While Bolton found poor whites to be a source of political tension, he argued that the class had little influence on southern social and political development. Separation of poor Citation: David Prior. Poor Whites in the Antebellum U.S. South (Topical Guide). H-Slavery. 08-24-2019. https://networks.h-net.org/node/11465/pages/4372893/poor-whites-antebellum-us-south-topical-guide Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 3 H-Slavery whites from the plain folk has also challenged the idea of herrenvolk democracy. This concept was originally applied to the non-slave owners of the antebellum South by historian George Fredrickson, who argued that racial prejudice and democratic culture merged into an ideological outlook that united the South’s “plain folk” with the slave owning elite in defense of slavery (Fredrickson, 1971, 1981). As David Brown argues, herrenvolk democracy could be applied to the yeomen middle-class but it did not extend to unpropertied white southerners who stood outside the mainstream of southern social culture (Brown, 2013). This social marginalization was particularly acute in regard to poor white women. Victoria E. Bynum has illustrated that the structures of the southern economy were even more difficult for women to penetrate due to the strict gender roles that defined the southern patriarchal social order. Poor southern white women had little chance of marrying into wealth or obtaining gainful employment let alone of entering the ranks of the extended plantation or yeomen family that represented the boundaries of respectable southern social culture (Bynum, 1992).
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