John C. Carter
1860 Census
Thu May 31 23:55:50 2001


While slavery was obviously a labor system, it was also a measure of social status, of wealth, and of a slaveowner having arrived in Southern society. But it was the middle-class masters, with the five slaves or less, who held the majority of the slaves in the South (Oakes). According to James Oakes in the "Ruling Race," "The significance of middle-class slaveholders derived not from their numerical preponderance but from their economic power, their broad control of the slave labor force, and their political activity. In Alabama...nearly all the antebellum congressmen and most of the state legislators had dual careers or had begun their adult lives in non-agricultural jobs that served to propel their later success. If there was any single class of men that set the tone of life in the antebellum South, surely this was it." He also talks about the middle-class slaveholders who worked in professions other than farming (artisans and brickmakers, for instance) who employed their slaves in their professions, while the slaveholder's children tended the farm. This is the group that needs a closer look, as well as the yeomen households that included small numbers of slaves (see Stephanie McCurry, "Masters of Small Worlds").

It is hard to tell if those "five" slaves of the slaveholder were a family, or if they were children or men. Determining that composition would shed a lot of light on the subject, along with the professions of the slaveowners.

John