Masters of the Big House: Elite Slaveholders of the Mid-Nineteenth-Century South

1. Social and Demographic Characteristics

1 SOCIAL AND D E M O G R A P H I C CHARACTERISTICS This is indeed an afflicting stroke to me—So unexpected!—My most excellent Son—the ornament of my society—my friend & companion! In silence 8c tears I have to lament his death to the end of my days. — N A T H A N I E L HEYWARD, September 6,1819 About 6 O'clock in the afternoon . . . [Maria] gave Birth to one of the sweetest little daughters that ever was presented to a "Papa." . . . the little stranger is admired by every one who has seen it, and all concur in its being the "largest and finestchild" in the state. — LEVIN R. M A R S H A L L , September i, 1827 Jimmie Metcalfe was at Auntie's several nights ago, and sent his love to me. Please tell him, the next time you have the very extremepleasure of seeing him, "Not to waste his love on the desert-air." Between you and myself, I don't believe Jimmie's love, is worth having. I should not prize it if he were so very generous as to bestow it upon me. — GUSSIE PUGH, December n [postwar] S O C I A L A N D D E M O G R A P H I C C H A R A C T E R I S T I C S • 19 HATEVER their background, geographic location, or extent of wealth, the elite slaveholders shared certain common social and cultural characteristics . Among these were large families;a relatively high infant mortality rate; an extraordinary degree of intermarriage, extending not infrequently to firstcousin unions; a cosmopolitan life-style and outlook; surprisingly close social, economic, and cultural ties with the Northeast; an emphasis upon quality education for both males and females; a catholicity of intellectual interests; and— not least—a confident belief in God as the omnipotent regulator of human affairs. The structure of elite families mirrored closely the demographic patterns of the general population in the nineteenth-century South. Thus, the overwhelming majority of large slaveholderswere or had been married, only rarely did they sever their matrimonial ties through divorce, and most of them fathered numerous children, a significant number of which did not survive to maturity.1 Although the infant mortality rate was doubtless not as high among elite families as among those of more modest economic circumstances, it was still painfully high, thus bearing eloquent testimony to the ubiquitous incidence of disease in the rural South as well as to the primitive state of medical knowledge in the antebellum period.2 The specter of death was omnipresent, not only among infants , but among older offspring as well. By no means unique was the experience of Louisiana planter David Barrow, eight of whose twelve children died at an early age. Similarly, his cousin William Ruffin Barrow lost five of his ten children before they attained their majority, as did South Carolina rice grandee Robert F. W. Allston. Thomas Spalding of Sapelo Island, Georgia, fared even worse, losing eleven of his sixteen children in infancy or early youth.3 One can only imagine the emotional toll inflicted upon planter families, especially the mothers, by such distressing losses. Levin R. Marshall's first wife, 1. Of the 339 slaveholders in this study, only n can be positively identified as having never been married. 2. Catherine Clinton has estimated the infant mortality rate among southern planter families at 14 percent, compared to 12 percent for northern farmers (The Plantation Mistress, 156). 3. Elrie Robinson, Early Feliciana Politics (St. Francisville, La., 1936), 84-85; Dictionaryof Louisiana Biography, 2 vols., ed. Glenn R. Conrad (1988), I, 44; J. H. Easterby, ed., The South Carolina Rice Plantation as Revealed in the Papers of Robert F. W. Allston (Chicago, 1945), 18; Frances Anne Kemble, Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-39, ed. John A. Scott (New York, 1961), 402. W 20 ' M A S T E R S OF THE BIG H O U S E Maria, was so distraught after the unexpected death of her four-year-old daughter that she followed her "most perfect. .. [and] dearest child" to the grave less than two years later. Maria "never was as cheerful afterwards," observed a close friend at the time of her death.4 Occasionally, families would be stricken with multiple deaths within a short...