Profile of a Late Ante-Bellum Community

Abstract

MOST historians agree that too little of the history of the Oild South has been written from the annals of the poor.' Yet that section had its full share of landless white people in varying degrees of poverty. Just above the very poor and the landless was another class which some historians have chosen to call Cyeomen farmers. Partly because they were too numerous, too commonplace, and too much like common folk everywhere, these two classes have not inspired exhaustive studies commensurate to their numbers and to their importance in society. On the other hand, the small upper class, the prima donna group of ante-bellum Southern life, has received notice far out of proportion to its numbers and, it is sometimes suspected, its social and economic importance. Significantly, the members of the upper class and of the group striving for upper-class status have furnished nearly all of the written local accounts of the South's inarticulate masses. Too often the writer was a haughty neighbor on whose land some poor white had squatted, and he showed little sympathy for the lot of such men. Too much reliance has also been placed in those contemporaries who wrote travel accounts. Bumping over poor roads, for which the South was notorious, and eating food to which he was unaccustomed, the traveler was inclined to inject his discomfort into a somewhat distorted description of the common people whom he encountered. Sometimes a condescending visitor, such as Frederick Law Olmsted, saw only what he came to see and, bent upon obtaining his money's worth, recorded his observations in terms of preconceived ideas, prejudice, and subjectivity. The limited scope of a traveler's observations always precludes a complete picture of a section's people. The queer customs and habits of the poor people of the Old South, the unusual appearance of their habitations, or perhaps their picturesque speech furnished the major topic for comment. Hence the propertyless white, discovered long ago, is in great need of rediscovery. Perhaps the most reliable data available for a comprehensive study of the submerged half or two thirds of the population are to be found in the manu-