Slavery ruined the bargaining power of landless whites and consolidated the power of plantation owners, which was why some early white settlers opposed it. In 1860, two-thirds of whites in the South owned no slaves at all; they couldn’t afford to. Yet poor whites provided the cannon fodder of the Confederacy in the Civil War. Meanwhile, rich white men who owned “20 Negroes or more” could be exempted from military service.
