Slaves comprised 73 percent of ordinary white Georgia farmers’ assets

Evidence

At his death in 1818, the county recorded both his will and an “Inventory of the Goods and Chattles [sic] of Pleasant Moon, Deceased.” The inventory was thorough, including items like “1 young bay mare @ 60. And 1 bay horse cart @ 35”; “1 cow at 15 and 7 head of sheep at 11”; “1 feather bed and furniture @ 90”; and “1 shot gun @ 11.” Not counting the land, my sixth great-uncle’s estate was fairly modest, totally 2,293.22, or approximately 46,000 in 2019 dollars. … Most surprising, though, were two listings near the top of the household inventory: “1 negro woman named Naomi @ 800, & 1 named Susan @ 450,” totaling 1,250; and on the line below that, “1 named Eliza at 275, & 1 named Bird, a boy @ 150,” totaling 425. To put this into perspective, there is no other single line in the entire page-long household inventory that registers more than 100. Taken together, these two lines of human slave property totaled 1,675, accounting for an astonishing 73 percent of the assets of the estate. In other words, even among my barely-above-subsistence-farming ancestors, their way of life and economic well-being were thoroughly dependent on owning slaves. — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 628