Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South by Keri Leigh Merritt

Abstract

Reviewed by: Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South by Keri Leigh Merritt Tim Lockley Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South. By Keri Leigh Merritt. Cambridge Studies on the American South. ( New York and other cities: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. x, 361. Paper, $32.99, ISBN 978-1-316-63543-8; cloth, $59.99, ISBN 978-1-107-18424-4.) Keri Leigh Merritt's important new book depicts an antebellum South where life for poor whites was incredibly harsh. Lacking access to capital and unable to sell their labor for a decent price, poor whites were suffocated by a system clearly designed to entrench the power of the slaveholding elite. The themes that run throughout Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South show the wealthy elite consciously controlling and suppressing the white poor in the antebellum South for their own gain and the white poor, who were well aware of this state of affairs, usually unsuccessfully resisting it as best they could. While nailing down exactly who fell into the category "poor whites" has troubled many scholars, Merritt estimates that by 1860 at least one-third of the [End Page 456] white population in the antebellum South were poor, lacking land or any meaningful property. These people could never aspire to reach the status of slaveholders and were "truly, cyclically poor" (p. 16). Merritt's strongest and perhaps most provocative argument is that the elite actively strove to perpetuate this situation. She does not see a herrenvolk democracy operating here. The elite failed to provide an adequate educational system that might have provided the poorest with the skills to improve their lot, and they used the power of the law to harass, corral, and bully the poor. Those without obvious means of support could be arrested for vagrancy and then bound out in a form of unfree labor. Those suspected of property crimes, drunkenness, interracial fraternization, or a whole host of other offenses could be jailed, publicly beaten, and exiled. Propertied whites controlled the machinery of justice, and those caught in the system could do little to escape it. Poor whites were not simple victims in this process. Many did exactly what the courts said they did—including lying, cheating, and stealing—in their efforts to do whatever they could to survive. In this sense, poor whites and the enslaved similarly resisted planter oppression. This was perhaps most noticeable during the Civil War, when those trying to avoid the Confederate draft melted into the swamps, forests, and mountains of the South just as enslaved people had for a long time. My caveats are relatively minor and are more about added nuance than anything else. Sometimes Merritt treats the South as monolithic, seeing the same hierarchies and oppressions almost everywhere. Any person bold enough to look at the entire South will always leave themselves open to this criticism, but it is worth reiterating the sheer variety and complexity of southern environments. For one thing, southern towns and cities clearly operated under slightly different social conventions since poorer whites tended to congregate there and gained some social and political power as a result. For instance, shopkeepers could turn a blind eye to illegal trading between poor whites and the enslaved. Moreover, Merritt downplays what I think were genuine efforts by at least some elite southerners to create a network of private and public benevolence, including a functioning system of public education. While there is an argument that charity is a form of social control, it is hard to always see it in this light and thus overlook those who tried to help poorer whites, particularly the sick, disabled, and orphaned. Provisions for public education were admittedly patchy, indeed some states did very little, but in North Carolina and Alabama most white children had access to at least some public education by the 1850s and enrollment rates matched those of some New England states. Furthermore, those working to create effective public school systems promoted in print the racially cohesive effect of providing education only to whites. Evidently not all members of the slaveholding elite wanted to suppress the poorest whites. None of...