From: turrell@violet.berkeley.edu (David Turrell)
Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa
Subject: Plantation Population
Date: 31 Aug 1992 06:59:28 GMT
Organization: Cobol Pacific University
NNTP-Posting-Host: violet.berkeley.edu

In article <1992Aug26.192946.26563@bnlux1.bnl.gov>
KARLIN@BNLCL6.BNL.GOV (P.L. Cowan) writes:

>In the recent heated discussions I posted an erroneous statistic. I
>stated that 2000 plantation owners held the majority of all slaves in
>the South. This is incorrect. It is true that there were only about
>2300 plantations that held 100 or more slaves, but while that is alot
>of slaves, the total number involved on these large holdings was much
>less than a majority of the 3-4 million slaves.
>
>The total number of slave holders in 1860 was roughly 350,000. This
>figure is approximatley 5-6% of the total white population in the
>South. However this can be misleading since many farms were run by
>extended families with only the head of the family holding the slaves.
>(For this reason it is often claimed that R. E. Lee held no slaves,
>when in fact they were held by his father-in-law.) A more resonable
>accounting is that 25% of Southern families held one or more slaves.
>(Roughly 20% of slave holders held only one slave.)
>
>I still believe ... that a very few large plantation owners exerted
>inordinate influence on the governments of the Southern states, and
>that this minority was highly motivated to protect the institution of
>slavery. However, I may have tended to underestimate the importance of
>the influence of owners of medium-sized holdings.
>
>[...]

I haven't been following this discussion, but I am aware that the
southern Planter class was a minority and that small, independent
farmers who didn't own slaves constituted the largest single group of
the population.

Your number of slaveholding families is about right according to my
source, Stampp's "The Peculiar Institution". There were 385,000 slave
owning families, out of 1,516,000 families in the slave states, making
the percentage of slaveholders about 25% overall. Those states had a
total population of 12,302,000, of which 8,098,000 were white,
3,954,000 were slaves, and 250,000 were free blacks.

The percentage of slave owning families by state:

	Mississippi, South Carolina		50%
	Georgia					40%
	Alabama, Florida, Louisiana		33%
	Kentucky, North Carolina,
		Tennessee, Texas, Virginia	25%
	Arkansas				20%
	Maryland, Missouri			12.5%
	Delaware				3.3%
	District of Columbia			N/A

Of those slave owning families, only a relative few owned enough
slaves to be considered Planters. 12% had holdings of 20 or more
slaves, which for this purpose is the minimum for Planter status, less
than 3% had holdings of 50 or more, and at the pinnacle were 3,000
families, or less than 1%, who had slaveholdings of 100 or more.

However, if the number of Planter families was a small minority, the
majority of slaves did live on plantations. This concentration of
slaves greatly influenced the institution of slavery. Control was more
difficult, and therefore more harsh, the more slaves there were in
relation to masters.

In 1860, slaves were 32% of the population of the South. Here is a
breakdown by state, with state populations in parentheses. The state
populations, taken from another source, don't add up to the population
of the South given in Stampp's book, but 11,938,685 is close enough.

	South Carolina		57%	(703,708)
	Mississippi		55%	(791,305)
	Louisiana		47%	(708,002)
	Alabama, Florida	45%	(964,201), (140,424)
	Georgia			44%	(1,057,286)
	North Carolina		33%	(992,622)
	Virginia		31%	(1,219,630)
	Texas			30%	(604,215)
	Arkansas		26%	(435,450)
	Tennessee		25%	(1,109,801)
	Kentucky		20%	(1,155,684)
	Maryland		13%	(687,049)
	Missouri		10%	(1,182,012)
	Delaware		1.5%	(112,216)
	District of Columbia	N/A	(75,080)

The largest percentages of slaves show where most large plantations
were located in 1860, but the census data neglects part of the story.
As a rule, the gulf states had the largest slave percentages just
before the Civil War, but the Deep South was settled at a late date.
The loss of fertility, because of overgrowing, in the Old South
(Virginia and the Carolinas) led to a massive shift of slave labor,
with the breaking up of slave families. This disruption added
certainly to the problems of control posed just by having so many
slaves in proportion to the white population, adding to the harshness
of slavery, and to the Planter's need to delude himself and others as
to the nature of slavery, which as a member of the wealthiest and most
educated class he was in an excellent position to do.

-David
Newsgroups: alt.war.civil.usa