Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders

by James Oakes

"A sweeping and spirited history of Southern slaveholders."―David Herbert Donald This pathbreaking social history of the slaveholding South marks a turn in our understanding of antebellum America and the coming of the Civil War. Oakes's bracing analysis breaks the myth that slaveholders were a paternalistic aristocracy dedicated to the values of honor, race, and section. Instead they emerge as having much in common with their entrepreneurial counterparts in the they were committed to free-market commercialism and political democracy for white males. The Civil War was not an inevitable conflict between civilizations on different paths but the crack-up of a single system, the result of people and events.

Genres: History, American History, Race, Nonfiction, 19th Century

334 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

James Oakes is the author of several acclaimed books on slavery and the Civil War. His most recent book, Freedom National, won the Lincoln Prize and was a long-list selection for the National Book Award. He lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Tsotw · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book makes a strong case to throw out the popular conception of slavery in the south as being the aristocratic, paternalistic pursuit of a tiny class of aristocrats, in favor of one where the majority of slaveholders owned relatively few slaves and had conceptions that were far more democratic, egalitarian (for whites of course), and free enterprise than the planter aristocracy. As such it's a compelling and eye opening read for those of us who haven't explored the history of the south very much. Oakes lards the book with excerpts from the personal journals of slaveholders and Southern periodicals, and it's bracing to read with what alacrity they could bang on about freedom and talk about how much whipping was appropriate to punish the human beings they held as chattel slaves.

I am not the biggest fan of Oakes' prose style, it can get writerly, making some of the reading a bit of a slog. An example line:

"To fear death in the antebellum South was to live in constant terror of the immediacy of one's fate."

The weakest section of the book is a discussion of the evangelical protestantism of the South. This discussion is framed around the fundamental conflict of protestant Christianity and the slaveholders materialistic, deeply racist philosophy. At best short shrift is given to the extensive, scripturally based defense of slavery that Southern intellectuals and ministers put out. Oakes gives the impression that southern slaveholders were acutely aware of a direct conflict between their theology and their slaveholding, and were continually tormented by it. But as with their conception of "freedom", I think that slaveholders most likely reconciled their theology with their pecuniary interests just as easily as they reconciled their political ideals with it.

Overall an enlightening read and highly recommended.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oakes provides ample evidence in the Chapter "Mater Class Pluralism" for the existence of a democratic and pluralistic tradition in the antebellum South. In Oakes' account, the antebellum South was suffused with the same republican acquisitiveness as the North. In Oakes words:

The dominant slave holding culture grew out of the colonial experience in America and embraced the diversity of southern society. It took form in the rapidly expanding slave economy of the antebellum period and so produced a world view that equated upward mobility with westward migration. For unlike plantation life, physical movement, upward mobility, and social fluidity shaped the destinies of the vast majority of American slaveholders. (p. 68)

That is to say, the Southern man sought to accumulate capital in the form of human beings. The road to becoming a planter was open to men of talent and drive in the South just as the road to becoming a merchant-capitalist was open in the North. Martin van Buren's call for planters and plain republicans to face west makes sense. The North and the South had a great deal in common, save the peculiar institution. Both were bourgeois societies according to Oakes.

[Danny · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent examination of slaveholders in the antebellum period. Oakes does an excellent job demonstrating that slaveholders were a diverse class, and makes an excellent argument that not only were these slaveholders acting in the marketplace, but were capitalist themselves. This is contrast to Genovese who would argue that slaveholders may have acted in the market but were paternalists.

The chapter on Christianity is an oddly placed chapter that does not really contribute to the arguments being made here. Overall, the book is well written and an excellent contribution to the historiography on slavery and capitalism.

[Francis X DuFour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not GWTW plantations!

An excellent study of the South’s producers of “King Cotton” up until the Civil War. Covering a wide spectrum of growers, from small farms with only a few slaves to the Planters growing hundreds of acres, the author explains the differing social, political and class divisions as well as their commonalities. Great original sources and a fascinating read.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Ruling Race is a study of southern slaveholders and their ideology in the post-revolutionary era. The fact that many of Oakes's arguments are considered a given today speaks to the influence of this work.

[Samuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

James Oakes wrestles with a favorite subject of antebellum American history, the paradox of slavery: Southern slaveholders (in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Stephen A. Douglas) argue for greater democratic freedoms of "all"--really white, land-owning men--while simultaneously upholding a social and economic system that subjugates an entire race. The RULING RACE, as the title implies, focuses on the overlapping nature of race and class (white slaveholders and black slaves) in the antebellum South. His source base intentionally turns away from large plantation owners (owning 20 or more slaves), which have been extensively spoken about in the historiography, and instead focuses on the records produced by small slaveholders (owning 5 or fewer slaves). By focusing on the slaveholders outside of the planter class, Oakes attempts to demonstrate how the South actually upheld many American values held in common with the North--democratic ideals, socioeconomic mobility, westward expansion, etc.

It was these slaveholders of humbler means that helped shift the society at large away from paternalism and toward individualism and equality of opportunity. Oakes mentions some interesting observations in demographic changes: Scotch-Irish and German migration from the North to the South "helped change...the typical [image of a] master from the haughty English gentleman" aristocrat of the 17th c. "to the democratic entrepreneur" of the 19th c. (16). He also mentions how these ethnicities originally bristled at slavery upon first arriving in the South but eventually gave into the system in as they recognized it as the only means of economic mobility--sometimes going into debt to obtain a slave in hopes of "making it" in society. Slaveholding thus became more associated with upward mobility, physical movement, and social fluidity than the unchanging aristocratic image embodied by the upper class of plantation owners. In his chapter entitled "The Convenient Sin," Oakes explains how evangelical Protestantism paradoxically justified dominion in theory (OT) but also condemned it in practice (NT interpretations).

Oakes emphasizes the capitalistic forces that drove slavery. Unlike Genovese and others who argued for paternalistic, familial relations (however admittedly imbalanced), Oakes saw these outward gestures as ethical covering for economic ambitions. The ideology of Southern slaveholders was to get more land and slaves continually to improve their economic status. While there are moments where his argument seems to be less than clear in distinguishing between the economic forces of capitalism and the ideological forces of an emerging American liberalism, this is a decent book with interesting arguments and new things to say about a well-trod historical area.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent book, but it isn't really a history of "American Slaveholders," it is a history of slaveholders in the South from about the American Revolution to the Civil War. Oakes takes issue with Genovese's paternalism argument, saying that while maybe some really wealthy, old money conservative slave holders in coastal Virginia or South Carolina saw themselves as paternalists, the vast majority of slaveholders farmed on a much smaller scale and owned only a handful of slaves, and thought of their slaves only as property. Oakes claims that though lots of people wrote about what the ideal plantation should be like, hardly anyone was able to make that ideal plantation a reality. Southern slaveholders, Oakes says, were exactly like Northerners, they were democratic and believed fully in all the ideals of life, liberty and property, the only difference was that their most valuable property was slaves.
I do think that at times Oakes goes too far in his claims that the majority of slaveholders paid no attention to the ideals and philosophies of the super rich established planters. Why were all these common people going into debt to buy more slaves and land then they needed, if they weren't emulating this "advanced fraction"?
Still, this is well argued, and an important part of the literature.

[Sean Sullivan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know people who have read Oakes and loved him, but I found this book to be more than a little disconcerting. It is almost entirely the story of slaveholders and the way they lived and thought. Which is fine, we need books on slaveholders. But in Oakes’s move to humanize a class of people few in the modern age want to reckon, with he ends up downplaying the horrific nature of slavery.

As I remember, there was a lot of talk about the feelings of family and paternalism that the slave owners had towards their slaves, and a lot of talk about how most slave owners weren’t of the Thomas Jefferson plantation type, but were hard working people with less than a handful of slaves who were just trying to get ahead.

That’s all well and good, and it might actually be true. Maybe I am just not sophisticated enough in my reading of the book, but I think in portraying the way slave owners thought about themselves, Oakes loses sight of what they actually were – motherfuckers to a person.

[Lesley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Drags on and it is almost as if Oakes is ambivalent about the act of slavery. I am well aware that this is a book about the SLAVEHOLDER. However I think a little compassion is warranted. It does shed light on certain false stereotypes of the slave holding classes but I found that it dragged on, was dry, and it was a good book to help you fall asleep.

[Tunde · Rating 3 out of 5]

although this was a difficult read (took me a while to finish) i appreciated reading about slavery in america from a different perspective. i learned a lot about middle and lower class slaveholders, which is something that is rarely depicted in media.

[Scott Ford · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history of those who held slaves in the South. Oakes assumes an interesting vantage point from which to explore 19th century slavery.

[AskHistorians]

Very compelling study of various aspects of slavery across the South.