Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Preface to the new edition
- Acknowledgments
- A note to the reader
- Chapter 1 What did freedom mean?
- Chapter 2 The legacy of slavery
- Chapter 3 The myth of the prostrate South
- Chapter 4 The demise of the plantation
- Chapter 5 Agricultural reconstruction
- Chapter 6 Financial reconstruction
- Chapter 7 The emergence of the merchants' territorial monopoly
- Chapter 8 The trap of debt peonage
- Chapter 9 The roots of southern poverty
- STATISTICAL APPENDIXES
- Appendix A Construction of income and welfare estimates: 1859–1899
- Appendix B Occupational distribution of southern blacks: 1860, 1870, 1890
- Appendix C Estimates of labor supplied by slave and free labor
- Appendix D Calculation of interest charged for credit implicit in the dual-price system
- Appendix E Calculation of food residuals on southern farms: 1880
- Appendix F Estimates of per capita gross crop output: 1859–1908
- DATA APPENDIX
- Epilogue
- A Bibliography of Literature on the South after 1977
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Appendix B - Occupational distribution of southern blacks: 1860, 1870, 1890
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Preface to the new edition
- Acknowledgments
- A note to the reader
- Chapter 1 What did freedom mean?
- Chapter 2 The legacy of slavery
- Chapter 3 The myth of the prostrate South
- Chapter 4 The demise of the plantation
- Chapter 5 Agricultural reconstruction
- Chapter 6 Financial reconstruction
- Chapter 7 The emergence of the merchants' territorial monopoly
- Chapter 8 The trap of debt peonage
- Chapter 9 The roots of southern poverty
- STATISTICAL APPENDIXES
- Appendix A Construction of income and welfare estimates: 1859–1899
- Appendix B Occupational distribution of southern blacks: 1860, 1870, 1890
- Appendix C Estimates of labor supplied by slave and free labor
- Appendix D Calculation of interest charged for credit implicit in the dual-price system
- Appendix E Calculation of food residuals on southern farms: 1880
- Appendix F Estimates of per capita gross crop output: 1859–1908
- DATA APPENDIX
- Epilogue
- A Bibliography of Literature on the South after 1977
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Information on the occupational distribution of southern blacks is limited. The federal population censuses, generally the primary source of occupational data, did not record the occupations of slaves before the Civil War. The first two postwar censuses collected occupational data for blacks, but did not publish tabulations by race. Not until 1890 were published census figures for occupations of black Americans available.
The occupational distribution of slaves: 1860
Before the Civil War, the Census Office did not collect information on the occupations of slaves. The enumerators merely listed slaves by age, sex, color (black or mulatto), and owner's name. Not even the slave's name or family connections were recorded. The only systematic bodies of data known to us that supply information on slave occupations are the Mortality Censuses of 1850 and 1860. In both years the census enumerators, in addition to their regular duties of enumerating the population and collecting statistics on agriculture and manufacturing, were expected to ascertain from each household the particulars of each death that had occurred within the family during the preceding twelve months. Among the particulars requested was the occupation of the decedent.
Because the statistics collected by this procedure greatly underenumerated the actual number of deaths, they proved nearly worthless as a measure of mortality. “The Tables of the Census which undertake to give the total number of … Deaths,” said the introduction to the 1850 Census volume, “can be said to have but very little value.”
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- One Kind of FreedomThe Economic Consequences of Emancipation, pp. 220 - 231Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001