2 - Slaveholders and plantations

Summary

What did it mean to be a slaveowner in the antebellum South? This chapter first defines the social and economic characteristics of the slaveholding class and then considers in detail the debate concerning the relative capitalist or non-capitalist characteristics of this class.

Slaveholders defined

Historians agree that not everyone who owned a slave was considered a member of the planter class. Put in simple numerical terms, ownership of up to about five slaves meant belonging to the yeomen class; from roughly five to twenty slaves constituted the ubiquitous “middling” slaveholder; and ownership of twenty or more slaves bestowed the status of planter. Half of the South's 385,000 slaveowners (out of roughly 1.5 million white families or households, or a total white population of about 8 million in 1860) owned one to five slaves, about 38 percent belonged to the middling ranks, and 12 percent owned 20 or more bondpeople. Although planters' tendency to own multiple holdings in different counties and states makes precise calculations difficult, census data suggest that only 13,000 masters owned more than fifty slaves in 1860 and 75 percent of white families owned no slaves whatsoever (Parish, 1989, pp. 26–27; Scarborough, 1992). Just one planter in the entire South owned more than 1,000 slaves (Joyner, 1984, p. 34).

Beyond this broad consensus, however, historians disagree over what constituted the minimum number of slaves it was necessary to own to qualify a master as a planter.