Civil War Social Class

Before the war, the South’s economy had been based almost strictly on agriculture, mainly cotton, tobacco, and sugar, and all these industries suffered, especially cotton. The education system in the South had virtually disappeared, along with the old plantation system. More than 250,000 of the South’s young men were gone, too. Two postwar changes dominated Southern life. One was the bewildering new world faced by the freed slaves. The other was a new farming practice, known as sharecropping, that would ultimately make life more difficult for both ex-slaves and poor whites (Life in the South after the Civil War). Social class is conceptualized in various ways as a function of the theoretical or political orientation of the writer, much like “personality” is defined

differently by psychologists who hold different theoretical perspectives. Class and class conflict pervade the history of the United States, as well as all Western nations.

The decision to import large numbers of African slaves in the1600s has been attributed, in part, to Southern land owners’ fear of the power of a growing, dissatisfied white landless laboring class, the “giddy multitude.” The subsequent American revolution had a significant class conflict component, and the 1987 Constitution is often portrayed as a reaction against the gains made by the working classes after the revolution(Forward). Some of the values that still persist today in southern culture would be religion. Religion helped inspire slavery rebellion as well as advancing the cause of slavery. Some things that also inspired religion was the “South of slavery”, Civil War, poverty, racial discrimination, economic exploitation, ill health, and illiteracy surely needed that crucial support. Also the South went though some slow and agonizing processes of modernizing, religion provided justification for the wealthy to profit from economic development, however, it also gave meaning to those bearing the burdens of economic change without proper recompense. Throughout these significant changes, religious organizations remained central institutions of southern life and wealth was very unequally

distributed. For the slaves that produced a big portion of the nation’s wealth, upward social mobility did not exit for them. However, while poor southern whites envisioned a day when they might rise enough in the world to own slaves of their own. The cotton boom ended up with more millionaires per capita in the Mississippi River Valley by 1860 than anywhere else in the United States. However, in that same year, only 3 percent of whites owned more than fifty slaves, and two-thirds of white households in the South did not own any slaves at all. In the Deep South, an higher group of slaveholders gained more money from cotton. Some members of this group hailed from established families in the eastern states (Virginia and the Carolinas), while others came from humbler backgrounds. Wealthy plantation owners like Lloyd came close to forming an American ruling class in the years before the Civil War. They helped shape foreign and domestic policy with one goal in view: to expand the power and reach of the cotton kingdom of the South. Socially, they cultivated a refined manner and believed whites, especially members of their class, should not perform manual labor. Rather, they created an identity for themselves based on a world of leisure in which horse racing and entertainment mattered greatly, and where the enslavement of others was the bedrock of civilization(Learning, L. US History I (OS Collection). Despite this unequal distribution of wealth, non-slaveholding whites shared with white planters a common set of values, most notably a belief in white supremacy. Whites, whether rich or poor, were bound together by racism. Slavery defused class tensions among them, because no matter how poor they were, white southerners had race in common with the mighty plantation owners. Non-slaveholders accepted the rule of the planters as defenders of their shared interest in maintaining a racial hierarchy. Significantly, all whites were also bound together by the constant, prevailing fear of slave uprisings. Because race bound all whites together as members of the master race, non-slaveholding whites took part in civil duties. They served on juries and voted. They also engaged in the daily rounds of maintaining slavery by serving on neighborhood patrols to ensure that slaves did not escape and that rebellions did not occur. The impact of the emancipation of millions of slaves changed the power dynamics in the South considerably, but the determination of the white South to end Radical Reconstruction undid these. It was extremely hard for one in the south to move up the social ladder. This all basically depended on ones up keeping as well as where they currently stood and by where they were located. Overall it would be much harder for one to climb the ladder depending on race or gender. During this period race and gender meant a lot. Race clearly more so than gender. Things were certainly not fair nor ideal for most of social classes.

Reference:
Forward. Retrieved from http://my.fit.edu/
Learning, L. US History I (OS Collection). Retrieved from https://courses.lumenlearning.com/ushistory1os2xmaster/chapter/wealth-and-culture-in-the-south/
Life in the South after the Civil War. Retrieved from http://www.dummies.com/education/history/american-history/life-in-the-south-after-the-civil-war/