From: pdunn@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Patrick L Dunn)
Subject: Re: Benefits of slavery to non-slaveholders (was a fresh start)
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 08:07:51 GMT

In article <1992Aug20.233912.17855@cco.caltech.edu> morphy@cco.caltech.edu (Jon
es Maxime Murphy) writes:
>KARLIN@BNLCL6.BNL.GOV (P.L. Cowan) writes:
>
>>Let me ask you to read that sentence one more time in the context of the
>>whole paragraph. If you want to equate the cause of the Southern
>>aristocrats (that directly benefited from slavery) with those of
>>Hitler, I for one will not argue with you. However, I explicitly was
>>discussing the motivations of the NON-SLAVE-HOLDING Southerners. It is
>>important to remember that something like 80% of the slaves in the US
>>were held on only 2000 big plantations. These 2000 plantation owners
>>held disproportionate power in the "putative democracy", just as big
>>money has disproportionate power today. The vast majority of white
>>southerners held no slaves.

>Yet they derived economic and psychological comfort from slavery. They were
>insulated from a large group of economic competitors, and enjoyed cheap goods
>produced from their unpaid labour. No matter how miserable their condition,
>they could, and did, take pleasure in the fact that the Africans were far
>more degraded.

I agree with Jones on the point that non-slaveowning
southern whites gained psychological comfort from slavery.  Southerners were,
especially by 1860, scared to death of slave revolts a la Haiti.  There is a
entry in Mary Chestnut's diary in which she describes watching a play about a
slave revolt (the Sepoy Rebellion?) and asks herself how much longer the South
could exist without such an event occuring on a massive scale.

Emory M. Thomas in -The Confederate Nation, 1861 to 1865- (which I highly
recommend as an unbiased treatise on the roots of the CSA) discusses the
impact of the southern folk culture on unity on the notion of southern
nationalism.  Culturally, there was not much difference among non-white
southerners; they tended to share a similar ethnic background, etc.  This 
tended to lead itself naturally to "closing ranks" among whites.  The south was 
also quite rural, with people tending to live rather far spaced.  Slaveholders 
and nonslaveholders tended to rely on each other for companionship.  This also 
bred white racial solidarity, and a sense of resentment toward the 
slaveholder's wealth and power much diluted because of this.

A small minority of slaveholding whites controlled southern institutions, and,
of course, they used these institutions to extoll the benefits of
slavery.  White non-slaveholders were led to believe that they would suffer
horribly if slavery were ended.  In the cultural atmosphere, white southerners
were quite ready to believe this.  Probably the most tragic example of this was
the belief that northern abolitionists had in their agenda a great slave
rebellion, which further brought the south together when John Brown raided
Harper's Ferry.  At last, it was "obvious", southern institutions said,  that
the abolitionists wanted to exterminate the white population of the south.

I agree less with the notion that white southerners who did not own slaves
gained much materially from slavery.  Instead, I would say that the opposite
was true.  The south was a producer of raw materials, and (as any casual
student of the Civil War would know) produced very little in the way of
manafactured goods.  These raw materials were sold on the world market, and the 
profits used to buy what manafactured goods were desired but these were bought 
by the people with the profits, the slaveholders.  Perhaps the non-slaveholding
white southerner might have bought some livestock, fodder or seed from a
slaveholding planter, which was produced or raised by slaves, and would have 
cost less than the same items produced by a free farmer, but beyond this I
do not see how white non-slaveholders benefitted in a material sense from
slavery or slave-produced goods.  

I would say that the opposite was true.  Plantation
slavery in an agrarian economy tended to place the vast balance of arable land
acerage in the hands of few people, who through slavery had the means to
maintain and profit from these holdings.  The agrarian slave economy of the
south also stagnated industrialization by tying up capital, and this not only
hurt white non-slaveholders by disallowing them an opportunity to advance
through free enterprise, but set the south behind the rest of he country
economically by decades, and in some places it still hasn't caught up.  One 
southerner recognized this in the 1850's.  His name was Hinton Rowan Helper, 
and in a book entitled -Impending Crisis in the South- he stated almost exactly 
the same things as I have.  The planter elite severely censored this book, of 
course.

I would place the fear of economic competition from free blacks on the north,
rather than the south.  In the north, whites were as scared about freed
slaves as southerners, but in the south non-slaveholders were concerned about
their hides or their social institutions, in the north they were concerned
about their financial well-being via competition from free blacks.  Examples of
this fear were the Conscription Riots of 1863 and an amendment to the Illinois
state constitution barring permanent residence in the state by free blacks.
Economic competition would have been a factor in the south as well, had there
been anything economically to compete for.  And, certainly, there were
blatently racial motivations in northern actions such as the ones that I
discussed.  Slavery would have been maintained in the north had there been a
way that it could have been used profitably, or if it could have been easily
adapted to the factory (which was tried unsuccessfully in the south on a very
small scale).

Southern whites who did not own slaves actually had more to benefit from the
destruction of slavery than its maintenance, although they were certainly led
to believe otherwise.  I think that their feelings
toward slavery were more toward being terribly afraid of what would happen if 
it were eradicated than being enthusiastically happy that it existed.  I have 
often wondered how long the south could have remained THE south had the CSA won 
the war.  I expect a revolution within the country afterwards, but it could 
have been a revolution by southern whites who finally would have seen that they 
were being hurt more by the planter oligarchy than they could be hurt by free
blacks or even perhaps even revolting blacks, who might not have taken much
interest in them as long as they didn't respond to the revolt on behalf of the 
planters.

Overall, though, I feel sorry for southern whites who did not own slaves and 
supported the Confederate government.  They were duped.

Finally, as far as the opinions of African-Americans regarding the war, they
are quite appropriate for this group.  I created this group, and I kept the
charter intentionally broad.  There are many topics which are discussed on
this group, and all that are relevant should be welcomed (including whether or 
not R. E. Lee buttoned his coat or not).  I personally welcome such
discussions such as this, which I think are important to the understanding of
the war and are not discussed frequently enough in a rational manner.  What I
don't want to see is a racial flame war, instigated by anyone, and I am not
pointing any fingers here.  When or if that happens, the parties will go into 
my kill file.

PDunn