My inclination is to disagree with a conclusion of "considerable",  in regards to how may white males had a slave relative, but I can't do it without a database and some statistics . . . and you know what they say about statistics.   I have to agree,  though, that, yes, most white Virginians had a relative who owned slaves, and until someone comes up with some serious research results, I'll concede that "perhaps"  --I'm  not giving in easily!-- the percentage of white men who owned slaves does not prove how many white men had slave relatives.


  Joanne


[log in to unmask] wrote:
  Joanne's point is fairly taken, to a degree. Suppose the
Virginia plantation "aristocracy" was socially isolated from
the rest of Virginia society. And suppose too that only a
small number of Virginians owned slaves. From this it would
follow that only a relatively small percentage of white male
Virginians had the opportunity to conceive children by their
slaves, and hence that only a small percentage of the white
southern population as a whole had slave relatives.

But based on what we know, there was a fair bit of social
mobility for Virginia white men. Contrary to legend, Virginia
had a thriving and dynamic economy before the Civil War.
People moved into the slave-owning class, over time. And
people moved out of it too. So while it is true that at any
given time most Virginia men did not own slaves, a good many
Virginia whites did in fact have relatives who owned slaves.
And a goodly number of these slaveowners did have children by
their female slaves. So the percentage of slaveowners is not
a reliable marker of the percentage of the white Virginia
population who had relatives who were slaves. To put this
another way, if my uncle owns slaves and has children by them,
then I have relatives who are slaves. And this is true even
if I myself own no slaves at all.

How big is "a good many?" Who knows? Probably less than 99%.
But probably a sufficiently large number to count as
"considerable."

Warm regards,
Kevin
Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
Department of History
James Madison University

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