In Poor Whites of the Antebellum South, Charles C. Bolton gives a distinct voice to one of the most elusive groups in the society of the Old South. Bolton's detailed examination reveals much about the lives of these landless white tenants and laborers and their relationship to yeoman farmers, black slaves, free blacks and elite whites. Providing a provocative analysis of the failure of the Jeffersonian "yeoman ideal" of democracy in white-majority areas, this book also shows how poor whites represented a more significant presence on the political, economic, and social landscape than previously had been thought. Looking at two specific regions--the "settled" central piedmont of North Carolina and the "frontier" of northeast Mississippi--Bolton describes how poor whites played an important, though circumscribed, role in the local economy. Dependent on temporary employment, they represented a troubling presence in a society based on the principles of white independence and black slavery. Although perceived by southern leaders as a threat, poor whites, Bolton argues, did not form a political alliance with either free or enslaved blacks because of numerous factors including white racism, kinship ties, religion, education, and mobility. A concluding discussion of the crisis of 1860-61 examines the rejection of secession by significant numbers of poor whites, as well as the implications for their future as the Old South turned toward the new. Poor Whites of the Antebellum South sheds light on a group often neglected in southern history. It is an important contribution that will be of interest to all students and historians of the American South. "This is a fine book that sheds new light on the common whites of the South. Bolton looks at his subject from a different perspective and arrives at sensible and reasonable conclusions." --Richard Lowe," American Historical Review" Charles C. Bolton is Director of the Mississippi Oral History Program and Assistant Professor of History at the University of Southern Mississippi. Poor Whites of the Antebellum South Tenants and Laborers in Central North Carolina and Northeast Mississippi By Charles C. Bolton Duke University Press Copyright © 1994 Duke University Press All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8223-1468-4 Contents List of Tables and Figures, Preface, 1 A Window into the World of Antebellum Poor Whites: The Story of Edward Isham, 2 "A Third Class of White People": Poor Whites in North Carolina's Central Piedmont, 3 A Troubling Presence: White Poverty in a Slave Society, 4 Poverty Moves West: The Migration of Poor Whites to the Old Southwest, 5 Poor Whites in the Cotton South: Northeast Mississippi, 6 Electoral Politics and the Popular Presence: The Political World of the Antebellum South, 7 Electoral Politics versus the Popular Presence: The Secession Crisis in North Carolina, 8 Electoral Politics versus the Popular Presence: The Secession Crisis in Mississippi, Epilogue: Poor Whites and the "New South", Appendix A Note on the Use of the Federal Manuscript Census, Notes, Bibliography, Index, CHAPTER 1 A Window into the World of Antebellum Poor Whites: The Story of Edward Isham Poor whites of the antebellum South are generally invisible beyond the kind of records that consist essentially of numbers—census and tax records. Very little evidence survives, in other words, from which to build a portrait of human beings. Many of the clues we do have are encased in what is essentially a negative context—court records, ejectment proceedings, and records of insolvent debtors. But by searching through such material, we can begin to peer into this unchartered world and gain certain substantive insights into the kinds of daily lives that hundreds of thousands of southern whites lived in the days before the Civil War. For example, a poor white man named Edward Isham became historically visible because he was hotheaded, sexually promiscuous, and frequently ran afoul of the law. After Isham was charged with murder in Catawba County, North Carolina, in 1859, the court appointed a young lawyer named David Schenck as Isham's defense counsel. Sometime before Isham was executed in May 1860, Schenck recorded the life story of Edward Isham in lengthy detail. The Schenck biography allows us to glimpse, despite the often atypical behavior of its protagonist, the social relations of the southern poor. Edward "Hardaway Bone" Isham was born in the late 1820s in Jackson County, Georgia. During the 1830s his father lost the small tract of land he owned and moved the family to Pinetown in Carroll County, Georgia. There, his father labored primarily as a landless miner. During Isham's childhood, his parents separated, and he grew up in a house with his father and his father's common-law wife. Limited educational opportunities existed in the Pinetown area, and Isham attended school for a total of five days. Religion did not nourish in his hometown eit