Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South

Cambridge Studies on the American South

by Keri Leigh Merritt

Analyzing land policy, labor, and legal history, Keri Leigh Merritt reveals what happens to excess workers when a capitalist system is predicated on slave labor. With the rising global demand for cotton - and thus, slaves - in the 1840s and 1850s, the need for white laborers in the American South was drastically reduced, creating a large underclass who were unemployed or underemployed. These poor whites could not compete - for jobs or living wages - with profitable slave labor. Though impoverished whites were never subjected to the daily violence and degrading humiliations of racial slavery, they did suffer tangible socio-economic consequences as a result of living in a slave society. Merritt examines how these 'masterless' men and women threatened the existing Southern hierarchy and ultimately helped push Southern slaveholders toward secession and civil war.

Genres: History, American History, Race, Nonfiction, Civil War, Economics, Politics

372 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 8, 2017

Reviews

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. This is the book that I wished Nancy Isenberg's "White Trash" had been; if only Merritt's book would get similar press. Back when I reviewed Isenberg's book, I said, "Now, a lot of the people described were illiterate and we probably don't have too many of their thoughts and feelings. But there is archaeology; there are demographic or other kinds of records; there are folk songs, hymns, stories, and certainly from the 20th century onwards lots of recordings and interviews, I would guess. But all that would have required painstaking historian's work that Isenberg does not seem interested in..."

Well, Merritt is interested, and has the skills to analyze the data. Her book only goes slightly beyond the antebellum period, but there is certainly value in sticking to pre-Civil War as a distinctive period. Merritt does use newspaper writings and the views of travelers, and so you do get outsiders' views of poor whites. But she also uses court records, demographic data, and personal testimony. And she confronts, head-on, the larger implications of class, economy, sociology, and attitudes towards the war. She also powerfully shows that the antebellum South was an oligarchic and terroristic state, both where slavery and where propertyless whites were concerned. Merritt is meticulous in her citations and thus makes it clear that her arguments aren't all completely unheard of or revolutionary. But they were new to me, since I'm not a specialist in this era of history, and they were clearly and compellingly made.

[jess ~has abandoned GR~ · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's usually paperback fantasy novels that keep me up reading late at night, but this book was fascinating and un-put-down-able.

With an exhaustive amount of research, it challenges the image of a Jacksonian utopia promoted by neo-Confederate apologists, painting a picture of a surveillance society plagued by vigilante miscarriages of justice and a blatant disregard for the most basic of Constitutional (not to mention basic human-) rights.

The author's basic argument (which is exceptionally well-supported by the evidence) is that poor southern whites inhabited a social strata significantly below true freedom but still nominally better than the life lived by the enslaved. Their freedom of speech was severely restricted, in some places even under threat of execution; even if they could speak their mind, they were purposely denied a basic education, so the illiterate majority had little access to ideas. Their freedom of movement was closely monitored. And, of course, it was virtually impossible to compete economically with enslaved laborers, who the slaveowning class struggled to keep separate from the poor whites lest they should socialize and conspire together. (They did anyway.)

This economy and society was not sustainable, and the slaveowning class lived in perpetual fear of 1) the enslaved population, 2) the large mass of poor whites who were bound to revolt once they became literate and noticed the score, and 3) those two groups working together.

Following the Civil War, these two classes each took a step up socioeconomically. It can be argued that the Civil War did more for poor whites than for former slaves. Poor whites, now able to compete for wages, go to school, or find a homestead out west, found themselves less separated from the rest of white society. Newly-freed blacks found themselves nominally free, but facing many of the perils that once plagued the poor whites -- increased surveillance, limited civil freedoms and educational opportunities, strict labor and movement controls, and rampant over-incarceration for minor (or imaginary) infractions.

I cannot stress enough how exceptional this book was, and how reading it has informed the way I consider the progression of lower-working class labor and race relations.

My review does not do it justice.

Highly recommended.

[JRT · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book does a tremendous job articulating the full social, political, and economic consequences of the Southern slave society for not just enslaved Africans, but for "poor and middling whites." Merritt traces how antebellum slavery degraded the lives of every non-slave holder in the South. She explains how and why the preservation of slavery required various authoritarian and oppressive means not just towards the enslaved Africans and "free Blacks," but towards the non-slaveholding white population who posed an existential threat to the institution of slavery.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book is the way Merritt details how the system that we understand as "Jim Crow" had its roots in how the Southern slaveholding aristocracy treated poor whites during the slave era. From sharecropping, leased labor, vagrancy, over-policing and hyper-criminalization, deliberate undereducation, racial segregation, employment discrimination, and debt peonage, the treatment of poor whites in the antebellum South was a precursor for how "freed" Black folks would be treated post-Reconstruction. As such, based on the degradation that the white masses in the South suffered as a result of African enslavement, Merritt correctly observed that emancipation was two-pronged (Black emancipation and poor white emancipation), and that it actually benefitted poor whites far more than it did the newly "freed" Black folks.

This book is also a great account of how the arbitrary construction of race is used to entrench the class privileges of the economic elite. To that end, Merritt describes how poor whites were racialized and depicted as a distinct and degraded form of "white" in relation to the white slaveholding class, for the purpose of justifying the oppression that poor whites faced during the slave era. I highly recommend this book for anybody who wants to learn more about the intersection of race and class in the antebellum era.

[Cabot · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is generally a really good book focusing on the experience of “poor whites” in the antebellum South, complicating our picture of the era by drawing out their lives and the subjugation they faced in a slave society. What keeps this work from getting another star or two is how it treats slavery, highlighted in the subtitle. Merritt, by focusing on the lives of poor whites, often falls into the trap of reducing and flattening the lives of enslaved people (not to mention her use of outdated/euphemistic language to refer to them).
EDIT: After listening to class discussion (some of which was highly insightful, other parts mind-numbing), I think this book is far more valuable than not, and Merritt takes the essential step of adding class to complicate our understanding of the antebellum South and of the American caste system. Is it dull and long at times sure, but an insightful addition to the literature on Southern history.

[Ben D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Merritt has written an excellent book here. The text amplifies a social, cultural and economic evaluation of the impacts of slavery in the antebellum South. Dr. Merritt’s cultural and social assessment gives special attention to antebellum American life that is often overlooked. Slavery is safely presupposed as a moral evil. However, this book answers how slavery’s evil impacted economic circumstances, as well as social conditions for all residing in the South. The text argues that slavery kept a majority of families in the South; poor. In addition, the text is filled with brief biographies as well as narratives of ordinary individuals whom were affected by the reality of slavery. Here, we recognize that the institution of slavery actually caused many to be the victims of an unbalanced legal system as well, as the victimization among social, racial, cultural, and even educational realities for all in the south. Slavery moved and affected everything-and everyone. Moreover, Dr. Merritt does an excellent job showing over and over again, the patterns of the slave-holder’s life. And, how power, intellectual manipulation, economic greediness, and social bereavement can influence all in its surrounding. Of course, many scholars attack slavery on its moral wickedness, as well as racism, and the confederacy of the antebellum south. And, rightly so. However, Dr. Merritt not only accomplishes that, Dr. Merritt shows how these immoral things also had a broader contribution to the life ordinary people in the south. This text furthers the discussion by acknowledging that not all known truths about the antebellum south and worldview rest in the famous lives of people like Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson. Though, much is gained there, there is much more in the higher population’s cultural and social constructs, found in the content of their lives. I would recommend this book for academic learning as well as for non-academic settings, towards understanding a clear picture of antebellum Southern life.

[Andy Kindle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was fascinating. Expertly weaving in facts and historical accounts to show how slavery impacted the southern economy. I found so many relevant storylines relevant to today including the use in the south of vagrancy laws and other legal matters to keep classes in line; including poor whites prior to emancipation as they threatened the institution of slavery, and then to freedmen after emancipation. The control of society by the wealthy elite by withholding education, use of disinformation, maintaining poverty, controlling voting is reminiscent of conservative policies today. And as an economist, the impact of slavery on wages, productivity, employment, and comparisons to the economy in the North were really interesting. The stories of extreme violence of societal control in the south, both under slavery and to keep poor whites in line, seems to have strong connections to periods after emancipation not discussed in the book including reconstruction and later violence during the civil rights movement.

[Jeff Crompton · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Masterless Men, Merritt shows us the damage that the institution of slavery inflicted on the antebellum South beyond its obvious evil - that it poisoned every aspect of society. In a system built on forced, unpaid labor, poor white Southerners found that their labor had no value, and they were left without a role in that system. The slave-holding, landowning elite saw poor whites as a constant threat to the status quo, and kept that class subjugated and powerless through a wide variety of (sometimes shockingly brutal) means. Sadly, as Merritt says, "The violence borne by slavery had (and would continue to have) long-term consequences for all Southerners for generations to come." Impeccably researched, well-written and recommended for anyone interested in the history of the South.

[Eric Bottorff · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating examination of racial formation and the tripartite class divide within the antebellum South and the extent to which the master class had to work to prevent their socioeconomic system from disintegrating at the hands of a coalition between slaves and poor whites. And though it touches on it only briefly, also very good on the ways in which the privileges of whiteness were extended to poor whites after the Civil War.

[Jeremy Neely · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most important books on 19th-century U.S. history to emerge in the past few years, Masterless Men has helped me to think about so many parts of American line—particularly in the antebellum era but also in our own time—in new ways. This is now *the* book to read on non-slaveholding Southern whites, but students of several other topics—land policy, labor, education, crime and punishment, and Civil War loyalties—would do well to consider Merritt’s forceful interpretations.

[Danny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scholarship needs to incorporate class if it is going to study the antebellum south, and Merritt approaches that subject with the perspective of poor whites. I think the overwhelming majority of her scholarship is sound and she makes some excellent points. Worth a look for those interested in the antebellum period.

[Sve · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating look at the pre-Civil War southern society. What it takes to run a slave economy, and what's it like to try and sell your labor in that environment.
This book give me new insight into southern thinking leading up to secession.
Really well done.

[Marc Lichtman · Rating 4 out of 5]

“’The South,’ however, is neither a territory closely sealed off from the North geographically, nor a moral unity. It is not a country at all, but a battle slogan…

“Finally, the number of actual slaveholders in the South of the Union does not amount to more than three hundred thousand, a narrow oligarchy that is confronted with many millions of so-called poor whites, whose numbers constantly grew through concentration of landed property and whose condition is only to be compared with that of the Roman plebeians in the period of Rome's extreme decline.”—Karl Marx, 1861, The Civil War in the United States by Karl Marx.

“Recent histories concerning capitalism in the Deep South have revealed, to a certain extent, the vicious cruelty masters inflicted upon slaves. Yet these slave owners lorded over more than just blacks. In actuality, they maintained tight control over the vast majority of all Southerners – including poor whites. Dominating both the political and economic spheres, masters used both legal and extralegal means to keep other whites in line.”—Keri Leigh Merritt (in this book).


Many years ago, one of the Maoist groups that arose out of the split in SDS (1969) started talking about the need for white activists to “shed their white skin privilege.” [Apparently this was borrowed from the “Third Period” Stalinism of the Communist Party]. How this was going to happen was naturally always vague, but it seemed to have more in common with self-flagellation than with mass activity-- Common struggle is how people usually overcome racism and other prejudices. And they never seemed interested in getting rid of the one kind of privilege they could get rid of—middle class privilege—in the process joining the working class, the one class that can totally change society, with a long history showing that the labor movement had brought Black and white workers together, despite the limitations of the labor bureaucracy (see 'Labor's Giant Step: The First Twenty Years of the CIO: 1936-55). There’s been a rebirth of this formerly Maoist idea among US liberals and the middle class “left.”

Merritt points out that despite their theories of racial superiority, the desire for profits trumped “white solidarity; slaveholders preferred to use poor whites for the most dangerous work, since they wouldn’t lose any money if they died. And poor whites frequently also rejected the concept, and even rejected slavery. That was one reason why the South didn’t allow abolitionist literature through the mails and kept such tight control over poor whites through the courts and jails. Why they didn’t allow the Republican Party on the ballot (it might have gotten many votes). Under slavery there was generally no public education in the slave states, massive illiteracy among poor whites, and much of the white population was disenfranchised by a wide variety of methods including property requirements, residency requirements and poll taxes. Stringent censorship kept abolitionist literature away from even those few Southern whites who could read. Some of the states couldn’t even be reasonably called “democracies for whites.”

Poor whites were frequently arrested for “vagrancy,” that catch-all “crime” that covers everything and nothing. They could also be jailed for debt. Frequently they never saw a courtroom; they didn’t have money for bail, so their sentence was until the state decided to drop the charges, bypassing due process. They were frequently whipped like slaves and could also be auctioned off. They faced not only the legal justice system, but extralegal lunch mobs as well.

As usual Marx was right: “Labor cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.” I think a lot of liberal academics, and middle class “leftists” are trying (some consciously, some not) to remove the category of “class” from academic, if not all discourse. Along with this goes the bizarre transforming of women’s studies into “gender studies,” and besides making racism a problem of “bad ideas” rather than institutions, virtually eliminating the specific role of African- Americans; lumping together a large variety of people under the dubious umbrella of “people of color” (POC). I have noticed that most white-baiting today doesn’t come from Blacks—It comes from whites who consider themselves “woke,” whatever that means. They are usually upper middle class; baiting people who usually have considerably less privilege than they do.

Oberlin College, once a proud bastion of abolitionism and women’s rights today is leading students in a totally fake charge of racism against a bakery that no Blacks living in Oberlin, and no communists Black and white there during conferences in the summers have ever had any problems with. All this is a virtual counterrevolution against the programs many of us fought for years ago. It has been unfolding during a period of retreat of the working class, but that, it appears, is coming to an end (see 'In Defense of the U.S. Working Class and The Low Point of Labor Resistance is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward.

Most liberal opinion is that Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election because the working class (who Hillary Clinton calls “deplorables”) either voted for Trump out of racism[ or didn’t vote. But this ignores the economic crisis and its consequences. In a country with only two political parties, both controlled by big business, many workers who had previously voted for Obama some of them twice, living in areas where the lifespan has dropped by 20 years, took the only other alternatives. For an analysis of that election and the results since then, let me recommend [book:The Clintons' Anti-working-class Record: Why Washington Hates Working People|32947623] and 'Are They Rich Because They're Smart?.

Do Trump's rantings really do more harm to Black people than Bill Clinton’s massive incarceration under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996? Or his end to welfare without providing jobs, education, or childcare. To me that’s not science; it’s (philosophical) idealism.

Racism doesn’t start at the bottom of society; it starts at the top because it has always been about profits. Slavery didn’t benefit the mass of poor whites in the South; some of them doubtless believed that, but it only benefitted the tiny number of large planters, and those who bred and sold slaves. While slaves were prohibited from learning to read and write (amazing how many learned despite this), the South had no public-school system until Reconstruction, so poor whites were also consciously kept in ignorance by slaveowners who had contempt for people forced to work. There were large pockets of pro-Union sentiment throughout the South; the myth of the “solid South” was a product of the downfall of Radical Reconstruction (see Racism, Revolution, Reaction, 1861-1877: The Rise and Fall of Radical Reconstruction).

So, while poor whites gained more from emancipation than Blacks did, you can’t reasonably call white Southern workers under Jim Crow segregation “privileged.” They lived in areas with lower wages, fewer unions, worse education, worse social services, more political repression. The AFL-CIO would periodically announce an “Operation Dixie” to organize the South, but it would have posed a break with the Democratic Party segregationists. This, coupled with the formation of a labor party, would have represented a huge step forward, but the union bureaucrats instead kept their ties with the Democrats, and still do. And even after the downfall of Jim Crow, they didn’t launch such a campaign.

Bob Dylan had this question of the Southern white working class right in his wonderful song about the Medgar Evers’ assassination “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” which won him big applause when he sang it at the August 28, 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. One might ask if it’s considered “politically incorrect” today?

African Americans are not a “race,” but an oppressed nationality. For how this came about, as well as the politics that flow from it, see Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power.

[Laura Trombley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is not the most entertaining read or particularly well written. It is hugely significant and puts the civil war into a whole other light. An estimated, (due to inaccuracies in the census process) 1/3 to 1/2 of all southern whites lived in abject poverty having no property, no job opportunities, pay well below a living wage when they could find employment, and virtually no vote. Their lives were in many ways worst than the slave ( not trying to belittle the enslavement experience). Vigilante justice ruled the land and was focused on keeping the poor white trash in their place before the war. The oligarchy of the south wished to suspend democracy and rule as aristocrats. The war was a rich man's war fought by poor men, who often deserted due to not having any stake in its outcome. After the civil war, the newly emancipated slaves took the place on the bottom rung of the ladder. This set the stage for our ever ongoing issues with race. This is definitely a must read for everyone.

[Jordan Coy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good and sobering book on Southern pre-Civil War history. This book focuses on how slavery and the southern political system affected (and oppressed) the poor whites within the South.
Almost an open secret within the history and social criticism of the pre-Civil War South, Masterless Men details how the white lower-class was oppressed socially, economically, and legally by the upper-class landowners and slaver owners of the South. Dr. Merritt does an excellent job balancing the narrative between the specific legal codes and economic policies used to oppress poor whites as well as drawing from anecdotes of the victims who suffered under these unjust laws.

This should be required reading when discussing pre-Civil War era America or the History of the Deep South. Any nostalgic descriptions of life for the average white southerner in the pre-war South will be decimated when confronted by the horrific abuses and unjust treatment whites and blacks suffered under the hands of the Southern gentry.

4/5 Excellent Book & required reading

[Hunter · Rating 3 out of 5]

If nothing else, given the general dearth of good literature focused on this aspect of Southern society in the period, the book is a welcome one, but it is hard to read without nevertheless looking askance at it from time to time. Many excellent components, but doesn't really come together for a convincing piece in total as it feels that the framework itself is lacking. The economic analysis is interesting, and welcome, but the push back against the mainstream racial analysis of Southern society in the period is, in the end, too cursory and unconvincing.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well worth reading—changed my perceptions of Southern history before the Civil War. Things I hadn’t known: the South didn’t have universal public education before the war. Leased slaves were direct competition for white laborers. Poor whites were exhaustively policed for vagrancy before the war. After the war, state apparatus turned to policing black people.

Cambridge UP has to step up its copy editing game though. Surprisingly large # of errors, typos, words missing.

[RN · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read

Years ago I read a book that made reference to over 100,000 whites dying of starvation in the hills of Alabama during the civil war. I couldn't believe this, nor did I find any information to support it. So reading "Masterless Men": Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South was exactly the book I was looking for.

[James M. Doyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A careful, balanced account of the experiences and influence of an under-examined population with compelling contemporary relevance. A Poor White South, recognized the disadvantages of slave society but nevertheless, when secession and war required a declaration of identity, fought (and died by the 1,000s) for the Confederacy.

[Karla L Phelps]

yes this book mentions my great grandmothers relatives james chastain martha lousia sarah harriet emmeline mary cooper chastain i am now looking into why they were arrested in 1846 to 1856 cause from what i have read about theere family none of them were poor

[Rosa Angelone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book. Doing that thing that good history books can do..shift my view of an entire era of time and give me a path to find out more.

[Patrick Pettit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Accessible, if a bit redundant at times.

[Damien A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well researched. Well written.