Why Poor, Non-Slaveholding White Southerners Fought In The Civil War

[AverageOldGuy]

15. How my granddaddy explained it . . .

I was born (1944) and reared in Wilkinson County MS. I never knew my paternal grandfather who died well before I was born. My maternal grandfather and I were very close -- some of my earliest memories are following behind him as he managed his small grocery store, big country general store, and cotton gin.

My g-g-granddaddy and his generation all were slave owners as attested to in the 1850 and 1860 slave censuses that show them owning a total of over 230 slaves.

My granddaddy was born in 1896, thus, his lifetime spanned the period of Southern Redemption, enactment of the Jim Crow Black Codes, rise of the Klan, and the civil rights movement of the 1960's -- he died in 1972.

I don't recall the exact circumstances but, when I was college age, we were talking about the complex relationships in Southern culture between and among rich white, poor whites, blacks with some degree of social standing, and blacks who were worse off than poor whites.

One of his comments is reminiscent of LBJ's comment, quoted above -- he said something like: "Everybody wants to feel superior to somebody and for the white trash, it's the n____r -- no matter how low they may be, they are always better than a n____r."