Do You Support Slavery in the American South?

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Yeah, what percentage of the free, adult Southern population owned slaves?

4% Max

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Didn't we have this discussion last week?

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Slaves were to expensive for just "anyone" to own. Slaves ranged in price from 500-5000 dollars depending on age, skill, sex, condition. A 20-25 year old male in good health would have been around the 3000 dollar mark. A woman of the same age would probably be higher in price. Children usualy were in the 500-1000 range depending on various conditions. Anyone over 40 would have been 500 or would not have been sold at all. Slaves who were partially educated and could read would go for the highest prices.

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No, because it was economically stupid after the Mexican War.

By 1850, good mechanical cotton harvesters had been invented. If the wealthiest slaveholders had been good businessmen, they would have bought the harvesters, kept a minimum of field slaves to tend to the machines, and hired out the rest of the slaves out as corvees or industrial labor. They could have monopolized cotton growing and manufacture in one sitting, instead of shipping their crops 3000 miles off to Britain for spinning, etc.

The small cottongrowers could have scraped together enough money to buy one harvester for use among the group (like midwestern farmers had with the wheat threshers, or European peasants with the steel plow). During harvest time, the small farmers would share the machine and use their individual slaves as value-added labor in the local town.

Bingo.

You two of course are right on this. But I must add that the institution had become so ingrained and part of the social order and owning a slave was a class statement that it didnt matter that it was out of date. It was a part of the culture.

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No, because it was economically stupid after the Mexican War.

By 1850, good mechanical cotton harvesters had been invented. If the wealthiest slaveholders had been good businessmen, they would have bought the harvesters, kept a minimum of field slaves to tend to the machines, and hired out the rest of the slaves out as corvees or industrial labor. They could have monopolized cotton growing and manufacture in one sitting, instead of shipping their crops 3000 miles off to Britain for spinning, etc.

The small cottongrowers could have scraped together enough money to buy one harvester for use among the group (like midwestern farmers had with the wheat threshers, or European peasants with the steel plow). During harvest time, the small farmers would share the machine and use their individual slaves as value-added labor in the local town.

Bingo.

You two of course are right on this. But I must add that the institution had become so ingrained and part of the social order and owning a slave was a class statement that it didnt matter that it was out of date. It was a part of the culture.

Very true.  The interesting thing is how defense of that culture spread across white society in most of the South, even among those who didn't own slaves.

Well, it was sort of like the Hollywood stars today. Many many people want to live their life and actually aspire to do so. I find it ridiculous, but to each his own I suppose.