as Compared with Her Whole White Population

Among the many widespread misconceptions which existed with respect to slavery in Virginia, was the impression that the great majority of her citizens were slaveholders; that the slaves were scattered throughout the state, enriching by their labors every community, and that thus their emancipation was opposed from purely pecuniary motives. A presentation of the actual conditions will suffice to demonstrate that this impression was erroneous. The facts show that the slaveholders constituted a small minority of the population, and that, with comparatively few exceptions, the great body of the slaves were to be found within certain well defined sections of the state.

The United States census for 1860 fixes the white population of Virginia at 1,047,299 and the number of slaveholders at 52,128.^[181] Admiral Chadwick, in his work, Causes of the Civil War, says: "Of the 52,128 slaveholders in Virginia, one-third held but one or two slaves; half held one to four; there were but one hundred and fourteen persons in the whole state who owned as many as a hundred each, and this out of a population of over a million whites."^[182]

Thus, out of a population of over one million, only some fifty odd thousand men, women and children, were slaveholders, one-third of whom held only one or two slaves. If to the slaveholders be added such a number as would fairly represent those who were indirectly interested in a pecuniary way in slavery, the fact remains, that the overwhelming majority possessed no such incentive to support the institution.

AREA AND POPULATION OF STATE

By this same census the area of Virginia was fixed at 64,770 square miles, divided into one hundred and forty-eight counties. By an analysis of the census returns, it will appear that in the portion of the state lying west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, embracing eighty counties and 37,992 square miles, there were 596,293 whites and only 66,766 slaves; while in the remaining sixty-eight counties containing 26,778 square miles, there were only 451,006 whites and 424,099 slaves. Even with respect to this last mentioned portion of the state the slaves were not evenly distributed but were congested in certain well defined localities. Thus of the 424,099 slaves in the sixty-eight counties lying east of the Blue Ridge, 173,109 were in twenty-two counties situated between James River and the North Carolina border known as the "Black Belt," the white population of which was only 128,303.

"ARROGANT SLAVEHOLDERS"

The foregoing facts have an important bearing upon the statement so often found in the writings of historians and publicists, that the white population of Virginia and the South was composed in large measure of "slaveholders, arrogant and rich," and "poor whites," and that in the Civil War the former fought to defend their property interests in slaves, and the latter from a deep-seated fear that emancipation would reduce them to the social level of the blacks. It would seem impossible for such conditions to exist in counties and cities where the whites largely outnumbered the blacks. "Arrogant slaveholders," counting their slaves by the scores and dominating the social and economic fortunes of their white neighbors, could be found only in sections where the slaves greatly outnumbered the whites. While agriculture was undoubtedly the pursuit in which a great majority of the people of Virginia was engaged, yet this majority was not made up of "arrogant slaveholders" and "poor whites." The United States census showed that the great body of her white people were small farmers, wage-earners, mechanics, merchants and professional men, with some not inconsiderable number of miners, fishermen and employees in manufactories. The prosperous, among this more numerous element of her population, had little or no pecuniary interests in slave property, while the poorer classes entertained as little fear for the preservation of their social status from the abolition of slavery, as they had pecuniary stake in its maintenance.

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[181]

8th Census, 1860, Vol. on Agriculture, p. 245.

[182]

Causes of the Civil War, American Nation Series, Chadwick, p. 33.