“Poor, deluded, ignorant masses”: revisiting the poor non-slaveholding whites of the antebellum south

ABSTRACT The notion of racial unity among poor whites conceals as much as it reveals about white society in the antebellum period. This article examines the extent to which the notion of “whiteness” united white Southern men across racial lines and muted class divisions in this period. Central to the discussion is a reconsideration of poor whites’ connection to slavery as a group of society positioned at the bottom of the Southern social order.