Cavaliers And Crackers: Landless Whites In The Mind Of The Elite Antebellum South

Due to their marginalized role in southern society, landless white southerners have often been overlooked by historians who study social class, politics and intellectual culture in the antebellum south. But depictions of landless white southerners were prominent in contemporary elite literature and their place was debated extensively by social commentators. These depictions marginalized landless whites from southern honor culture and marked them as a people who were not quite white in a social and biological sense. This characterization was both a cause and effect of elite southern unease with the presence of a class of poor landless whites. This unease manifested itself in the intellectual debate over slavery. Southern elites feared a political revolt as antislavery messages aimed at poor laboring southerners began to grow. Interaction between landless whites and slaves also magnified elite unease with the class. They were often seen as conduits for illicit actions by slaves, and most importantly as a comcatalyst for insurrectionist plots. In the post-Nat Turner south, fear of slave rebellion dominated elite concerns over the future of slavery and hastened the development of proslavery ideology. Poor whites were a crucial part of concern over the protection of slavery, and proslavery ideology would often highlight the role the slave labor system could have in curing their ills, or in preventing the development of an antislavery class consciousness. These fears were a clear impetus in the development of antebellum proslavery ideology, which sought to illustrate the positive good that slavery promised to southern non-slaveholders. The inconsistencies between elite southern ideology, white supremacy, and the social realities that landless whites faced, intensified elite worries about the loyalty that these people had for the south and the institution of slavery, ultimately resulting in arguments that stressed secession as a way to separate southern landless whites from potential class and political allies in the antislavery north

The Crisis of White Supremacy in the Antebellum South: Poor Whites, Slavery, and the Coming of the Civil War

The so-called “poor whites” of the antebellum South have often been overlooked by historians due to their perceived insignificance to the political and cultural development of the South. However, within the context of the sectional debate over slavery, poor whites represented a disturbing presence for elite southerners who sought to defend slavery on the basis of white supremacy, a political platform built on the promise of universal white superiority. In order to defend the slave labor system from northern promises of white supremacy under free labor and to justify widespread southern white poverty, the architects of the antebellum southern cultural ideal marginalized poor whites and depicted them as inferior creatures who did not deserve the privileges of southern white supremacy. This dissertation argues that this discourse about poor whites played a significant role in the development of southern social and political culture, and stood at the nexus of central issues that contributed to crises that led to the Civil War. Proslavery elites feared poor whites due to their frequent interactions with enslaved black laborers that exacerbated southern fears of violent insurrection. The presence of poor whites caused tension with efforts to modernize slavery and adapt it to modern industries. And, most importantly, they appeared to be potential political allies to antislavery northerners. The problem that poor whites posed to efforts to adapt slavery to the modern world resulted in the further radicalization of proslavery ideology and the emergence of anti-democratic ideas within the politics of slavery. These provided increased impetus for the southern slave owning elite to seek secession from the United States in order to protect the institution of slavery