Page 290 - American Stories, A History of the United States

depending on the character and disposition of the master. Given a choice, most slaves Quick Check
preferred to live on plantations because they offered the sociability, culture, and kin- Why would most slaves prefer 11.1
ship of the slave quarters and better food, clothing, and shelter. plantation life to small farms given
the choice?

Yeoman Farmers 11.2
Just below the small slaveholders on the social scale was a substantial class of yeoman yeoman Southern small
farmers who owned land they worked themselves. Contrary to another myth about the landholders who owned no slaves 11.3
Old South, most of these people were not degraded, shiftless poor whites. Poor whites and who lived primarily in the
foothills of the Appalachian and
did exist, mainly as squatters on barren or sandy soil that no one else wanted. In parts of Ozark mountains. They were self-
the South, many of those working the land were tenants; some of these were “shiftless reliant and grew mixed crops,
poor whites,” but others were ambitious young men seeking to accumulate the capital although they usually did not
to become landowners. Most of the non-slaveholding rural population were proud, produce a substantial amount to
self-reliant farmers whose way of life did not differ markedly from that of family farm- be sold on the market.
ers in the Midwest during the early stages of settlement. If they were disadvantaged
compared with farmers elsewhere in the United States, it was because the lack of eco-
nomic development and urban growth perpetuated frontier conditions and prevented
them from producing a substantial surplus for market.
The yeomen were mostly concentrated in the backcountry, where slaves and plan-
tations were rare. Every southern state had hilly sections unsuitable for plantation
agriculture. The foothills or interior valleys of the Appalachians and Ozarks offered
reasonably good soils for mixed farming, and long stretches of piney barrens along the
Gulf Coast were suitable for raising livestock. In such regions slaveless farmers concen-
trated, giving rise to the “white counties” that complicated southern politics. A distinct
group was the genuine mountaineers, who lived too high up for farming and relied on
hunting, lumbering, and distilling whiskey.
Yeoman women, much more than their wealthy counterparts, participated in
every dimension of household labor. They grew vegetables and chickens, made handi-
crafts and clothing, and even labored in the fields. The poorest women even worked
for wages in small businesses or on nearby farms. They also raised much larger fami-
lies than their wealthier neighbors because children were a valuable labor pool for the
family farm.
More lower-class women also lived outside of male-headed households. Despite
the pressures of respectability, there was more acceptance and sympathy in less affluent
communities for women who bore illegitimate children or were abandoned by their
husbands. Working women created a broader definition of “proper households” and
held families together in precarious conditions. The lack of transportation, more than
a failure of energy or character, limited the prosperity of the yeomen. They mostly
grew subsistence crops, mainly corn. They did raise some of the South’s cotton and
tobacco, but the difficulty of marketing severely limited their production. Their main
source of cash was livestock, especially hogs. Hogs could be walked to market over
long distances, and massive droves from the backcountry to urban markets were com-
monplace. But southern livestock was of poor quality and did not bring high prices or
big profits.
Although they did not benefit directly from the peculiar institution, most yeomen
and other non-slaveholders fiercely opposed abolitionism. A few antislavery southern-
ers, most notably Hinton R. Helper of North Carolina, tried to convince the yeomen
that they were victimized by planter dominance and should work for its overthrow.
These dissenters pointed out that slavery and the plantation system created a privileged
class and limited the economic opportunities of the non-slaveholding white majority.
Most yeomen were staunch Jacksonians who resented aristocratic pretensions and
feared concentrations of power and wealth in the hands of the few. They disdained “cot-
ton snobs” and rich planters. In state and local politics, they sometimes voted against
planter interests on issues involving representation, banking, and internal improve-
ments. Why, then, did they fail to respond to antislavery appeals that called on them to
strike at the real source of planter power and privilege?
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