The slave population of Middle Tennessee, increased from 106,640 in 1840, to 131,666 in 1850 and to 148,028 by 1860. Land was very valuable in the cotton and tobacco counties, ranging in value from $13.54 in Giles County to $18.84 per acre in Williamson. The slave in Giles County was worth $797 while in Williamson County he was valued at $855. Both of these counties were rural and produced cotton. The average value of land for this section was only $8.82 per acre while the average value of slaves was $838. The total value of slaves in Middle Tennessee in 1860 was $126,488,926.
There were 18,524 slaveholders in Middle Tennessee in 1856; of this number, 14,145 held less than ten slaves; only one owned more than 300 slaves; about four thousand held only one slave. There were practically no large slaveholders in Middle Tennessee.
West Tennessee along the Mississippi River was a part of the Black Belt, and was more suitable for the production of cotton than either of the other two divisions of the state. There were 13,536 slaveholders in West Tennessee in 1856.[9] West Tennessee had larger slaveholders in proportion to the total number than either of the other divisions of the state. In East Tennessee those who owned one slave were one-fourth of the total number of slaveholders; in Middle Tennessee about the same proportion prevailed; and in West Tennessee this ratio was reduced to 1:5. In East Tennessee there was only one person owning more than one hundred slaves; in Middle Tennessee there were twenty-five; in West Tennessee there were eighty-five.
The plantations in West Tennessee were larger and more numerous, in spite of the fact that West Tennessee was not settled before 1820. Fayette County had 74 plantations containing between 500 and 1000 acres each, and 15 containing more than 1000 acres each. Fayette County in 1860 contained 15,473 slaves, all of whom had been acquired since 1830.[10] Shelby had a slave population of 16,953, which had been acquired since 1830. Some of the most productive parts of the Black Belt in West Tennessee, such as Lake County, were not in cultivation by 1860. The counties along the divide between the Mississippi and Tennessee rivers were very poor, and therefore not suitable for the production of cotton in large quantities. Counties like Hardin, Henderson, McNairy, Chester, Decatur, Carroll, Weakley, and Gibson were cultivated by small farmers, many of whom owned no slaves at all, while others owned only one or two slaves. In these counties, farmers worked their crops by themselves, or by the side of their slaves.
The leading crops of West Tennessee were cotton, corn, wheat, and tobacco. Cotton was the chief crop, and tobacco was raised in only the poorer counties, like Benton, Carroll, Weakley, Gibson, Haywood, and Lauderdale. Fayette and Shelby were the big cotton counties. West Tennessee produced in 1856 four times as much cotton as Middle Tennessee, and 3,144 hogsheads of tobacco against 4,511 produced by Middle Tennessee.[11]
Taking the state as a whole, it was never more than a state of small farmers. The plantation system as it existed in Mississippi or South Carolina never prevailed in Tennessee. The soils of Tennessee were not sufficiently productive to make slavery profitable on a large scale. It was more profitable to own from one to half a dozen slaves and work with them than to have an overseer. Of the 33,864 slaveholders in the state in 1850, 26,512 owned less than ten slaves each, and 18,198 owned less than five each. There were only 22 persons in the state who owned more than one hundred slaves. By 1856 this number had increased to one hundred and six.
The distribution of the slaves over the state was determined by the crops raised. In East Tennessee the ratio of slaves to whites was about 1 to 12; in Middle Tennessee, 1 to 3; and in West Tennessee, 3 to 5. In no county in East Tennessee was the ratio greater than 1 to 6, while in several counties it was 1 to 60, and in two-thirds of them it ranged from 1 to 20, to 1 to 60.[12] This, of course, was a matter of the soil. These factors reflected themselves in social life, education, religion, and politics. Slavery produced aristocracy and classes of society wherever it appeared. It made for the private school in education, Whiggery in politics, and the southern division among the Protestant churches that split. East Tennessee in Andrew Jackson’s time was the democratic part of the state. West Tennessee, the seat of the Black Belt, was the home of the Whig aristocracy. When the Whigs became Democrats in the decade between 1850 and 1860, the free farmers and small slaveholders, Democrats of East Tennessee, became Unionists and later Republicans. This same formula worked out over the entire state. There are Republican islands in Democratic sections, and Democratic islands in Republican sections. East Tennessee remained loyal to the Methodist Church, and West Tennessee went into the Methodist Church, South. These divisions were not peculiar alone to the three grand divisions of the state, but are found in the various counties.
For instance, in the Presidential elections of 1844 between Clay and Polk, Tennessee went for Clay. The big Democratic counties of today were Whig then. Fayette’s vote was 1217 to 1060 in favor of Clay; Shelby’s, 1828 to 1607 in favor of Clay; Madison’s, 1562 to 737 in favor of Clay; Gibson’s, 1423 to 688 in favor of Clay. These counties are now the big Democratic counties of West Tennessee. They stood the same way in 1848 on the election between Taylor and Cass. They voted overwhelmingly for the Whig candidate for Governor in 1847.[13]
Present Republican counties of East Tennessee went Democratic. Washington, 1225 to 881 in favor of Polk; Sullivan, 1533 to 350 in favor of Polk; Greene, 1701 to 1031 in favor of Polk. The same line-up expressed itself in 1847 and in the Presidential election of 1848.[14]
There are certain counties in West Tennessee today that are quite as overwhelmingly Republican as any in East Tennessee. These counties are in full sympathy with the point of view of the North in politics and toward life generally. The northern branches of the churches, together with their schools, are found in these counties. They prefer school teachers from the North and send their children to northern colleges. The human response to the soil that determined their attitude toward slavery is mainly responsible for these results. It was this force that made poor whites out of some and slaveholders out of others.