The Politics of Slavery & Inherited Power in the South

In their June report, Reuters, an international news agency, found that a fifth of the U.S. political elite, including members of congress, living presidents, Supreme Court justices, and governors, are direct descendants of slaveholders in America . Image Credit: www.reuters.com From 1861 to 1865, the American Civil War was waged between the United States, and 11 Southern states seceded from the Union, forming the Confederate States of America. The Civil War resulted from the struggles between those who opposed and supported slavery since the nation’s founding. Since America gained its independence from Great Britain in 1776 up until the late 1850s, the Northern and Southern states had reached a series of political compromises that kept the nation intact and civil war at bay. However, in 1860, with the election of anti-slavery president Abraham Lincoln, 11 Southern states seceded from the Union, leading to the Civil War.  Between 1815 and 1861, the Northern states rapidly modernized through industrialization. The North invested in expansion and diverse transportation systems, including roadways, canals, railroads, and steamboats. Meanwhile, the South primarily depended on its plantation systems, which produced commercial crops like cotton and relied almost exclusively on its large slave population. So, rather than invest in factories and railroads like those in the Northern states, Southerners invested their money in slaves, even more than they invested in plantation land. In the 1850s, the price of cotton surged, increasing the value of slaves. By the 1860s, the per capita wealth of the white population in the South was double that of those in the North. Additionally, three-fifths of the wealthiest individuals in the United States at that time hailed from the South. The passing of the 13th Amendment in 1865 which abolished slavery, wiped out vast swatches of Southern wealth built and sustained through the enslavement of African Americans. According to a Reuters analysis, the Civil War and the emancipation of the slaves “erased about two-thirds of the wealth in the South.” Unfortunately, the slaveholders who lost the most money were the best positioned to reproduce their white supremacist economy and feudal systems through sharecropping, tenant farming, and convict leasing. Meanwhile, the former slave population was left at the mercy of their former masters with few means to prosper. The federal government let white Southerners retain their land, and with it, they retained and exercised most of their political connections and power. Slaveholding families often united through marriage, compounding their resources and increasing their influence as they shaped the South’s new economy. According to Steve Hahn, a professor of history at New York University who studies slavery, capitalism, and the U.S. South, “The power of enslavers came not simply from their ownership of property, but from their ability to wield political power and from their clans.”  In May 1861, one month after the American Civil War began, Creed Taylor was confident about the future as he wrote the following to a relative, “Lincoln can’t starve me out unless he takes my land and negros.” Taylor was an Arkansas plantation owner who owned at least 1,500 acres of plantation land in New Gascony, Arkansas, just 13 miles west of Pine Bluff. By the end of the Civil War in 1865, he still owned most of his plantation land, which included vast cotton fields.  In 1860, Taylor enslaved 70 African Americans while his son-in-law, Irish immigrant and merchant Pierce B. Gracie, enslaved 11. Taylor’s then 4-year-old grandson, John M. Gracie, grew up surrounded by the wealth produced by slavery. Combined their properties, including their land and the African American slaves who farmed it would be worth approximately $119 million today.  After emancipation, the family retained their land. In the 1880s, after taking over for his grandfather, Gracie began experimenting with various labor forces for his plantation. He utilized poor African American farmers and Chinese immigrants. Among the labor forces he tried, leasing convicts from the government proved to be the most lucrative. Gracie signed a contract with the government, allowing them to supply him with prisoners to work the cotton fields on his plantations. According to newspaper reports, prisoners were housed on Gracie’s land in terrible conditions. Men were whipped regularly, some died from heatstroke, while dozens, mostly African American men, were killed on Gracie’s land from 1890 to 1905.  According to Douglas A. Blackmon, an author and Georgia State University professor, “Convict leasing was a method of truly resurrecting something that looked almost exactly like the slavery that had existed before the Civil War. It was not typical for convicts to go back into the exact same kinds of plantation settings ... but Arkansas was a place where that did happen.” Despite numerous allegations of mistreatment, Gracie thrived. He bought additional plantations near the Arkansas River and cleared thousands of acres around New Gascony to expand his family’s plantation holdings. In 1908, news reports stated that Gracie controlled 23,000 acres of land across multiple plantations and utilized 250 prisoners as laborers on his plantations. After 23 years, as lawsuits and government investigations increased, Gracie stopped using convict labor. According to local newspapers, Gracie saw the lawsuits by former prisoners as an “attempted hold-up.” He also stated that “it is impossible to handle a large number of convicts without sometimes resorting to somewhat extreme means to maintain discipline.” By this time, though, he oversaw a vast cotton operation 10 times that of his grandfather’s 1,500-acre farm.  Gracie turned to Italian immigrants after he stopped using prisoners and Black tenant farmers. He soon ran into issues with the Italian workers after they complained about the debt they couldn’t work off and the poor working and living conditions, including rampant malaria and poorly constructed cabins. By 1918, Black tenant farmers once again worked his plantations. In 1920, as cotton prices plummeted, Gracie lost his cotton empire and much of his farmland. He also had to sell the Little Rock Greek revival mansion worth $7.6 million today, now named after him.  In 1924, Gracie’s granddaughter, Elizabeth G. French, married another prominent Arkansan, James “Jay” Wilson Hill. In 1933, Gracie died at the age of 76. That same year, his granddaughter’s husband, Hill, established one of the first investment banking firms in Arkansas.  Today, Gracie’s great-great-grandson, French Hill, is an accomplished member of Congress, representing Arkansas’ second congressional district since 2015. In 2015, when Hill was sworn into Congress, using a family Bible that had been passed down from John M. Gracie’s father, a slaveholder. Hill’s net worth is between $10.3 million and $25.7 million, including his Little Rock residence. His holdings include a family investment company, New Gascony Company LLC., which echoes his family’s ancestral plantation. In their June report, Reuters, one of the largest and most influential news agencies in the world, found that a fifth of the U.S. political elite, including members of Congress, living presidents, Supreme Court justices, and governors, are direct descendants of slaveholders in America. Three current members of Congress are among those from the richest Southern families before the American Civil Wars, including Arkansas Representative French Hill, Nevada Representative Dina Titus, and Louisiana Representative John Kennedy. All three had slaveholding ancestors among the wealthiest 1% of Americans in 1860.  Though their forefathers lost 60% to 90% of their wealth, the remaining wealth built through slavery was passed down, and divided among multiple heirs over multiple generations. According to Joshua Rosenbloom,  an economist at Iowa State University who has studied wealth before and after the Civil War, even in cases where wealth wasn’t passed down, families of slaveholders still had many opportunities for prosperity. They bought land and invested in other industries. They sent their children to top schools, allowing their descendants access and entry into prominent professions. They also fostered relationships with other leading families that supported their economic interests. Image Credit: www.reuters.com Sources: www.britannica.com - The American Civil War www.reuters.com - Slavery's Descendants Part 6: Heirs of Power
Written by: Ninfa O. Barnard