The American Nation A History of the United States, Combined Volume (14th Edition)

The Economics of Slavery 323

than on small farms, but it was common enough every-
where. (It occurred even among slaves in the North, as
the American Lives essay on Sojourner Truth in this
chapter shows.) According to one study, one-third of all
slave first “marriages” in the upper South were broken
by forced separation and nearly half of all children were
separated from at least one parent. Families were torn
apart less frequently in the lower South, where far more
slaves were bought than sold.
Because the business was so profitable, the preju-
dice against slave traders abated as the price of slaves
rose. Men of high social status became traders, and
persons of humble origin who had prospered in the
trade had little difficulty in buying land and setting up
as respectable planters.
As blacks becamemore expensive, the owner-
ship of slaves became more concentrated. In 1860

only about 46,000 of the 8 million white residents

of the slave states had as many as twenty slaves.

When one calculates the cost of twenty slaves and

the land to keep them profitably occupied, it is easy

to understand why this figure is so small. The most

efficient size of a plantation worked by gangs of

slaves ranged between 1,000 and 2,000 acres. In

every part of the South the majority of farmers culti-

vated no more than 200 acres, and in many sections

fewer than 100 acres. On the eve of the Civil War

only one white family in four in the South owned

any slaves at all. A few large plantations and many

small farms—this was the pattern.

There were few genuine economies of scale in

southern agriculture. Small farmers grew the staple

crops; and many of them owned a few slaves, often

working beside them in the fields. These yeomen

50 percent or more

30–50 percent

10–30 percent

Less than 10 percent

Represents 2,000 bales of cotton

Slaves as a percentage of population

TEXAS

LOUISIANA

ARKANSAS

MISSOURI

IOWA

INDIANA

OHIO

ILLINOIS

MISSISSIPPI

ALABAMA

FLORIDA

INDIAN

TERRITORY

KANSAS

TERRITORY

GEORGIA

SOUTH

CAROLINA

NORTH

CAROLINA

VIRGINIA

KENTUCKY

TENNESSEE

PENNSYLVANIA N.J.

MARYLAND DELAWARE

Gulf of

Mexico

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

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Cotton and Slaves in the South, 1860Not surprisingly, the areas of greatest cotton production were also the areas with the highest
proportion of slaves in the population. Note the concentrations of both in the Piedmont, the Alabama Black Belt, and the lower Mississippi
Valley, and the relative absence of both in the Appalachian Mountains.