Slaveholders and slaves in Savannah's 1860 census

Abstract

ABSTRACT:This article re-examines the 1860 census for Savannah Georgia. It melds the free and slave census to gain insights into slave ownership, owners’ occupations and makes tentative suggestions as to slave occupations. It argues that the concentration of slaveholding among a minority of locally born residents explains both the tensions evident in white society during the 1850s and actions taken to ease them. It also demonstrates that the widely used data for the number of urban slaves in Savannah overstates the actual number byc. 20 per cent. The census thus complicates our understanding of the vitality of late antebellum urban slavery.