The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders

The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders is a book by James Oakes published in 1982 by Alfred A. Knopf.

The Ruling Race attempts a comprehensive history of the American slaveholding classes from the late 18th century until the Civil War. Oakes examines the function of slavery with regard to the social mobility of Southerners and the broad spectrum of social and economic backgrounds representing the slaveowning minority.Oakes, 1982 p. 155: “Such was the diversity among slaveholders that no single theory of master-slave relations emerged in the antebellum South.”Smith, 1984 p. 511-512: “In The Ruling Race, James Oakes examines the diversity of American slaveholders and presents fresh evidence to refute what he calls the plantation legend that recognizes only the planter aristocracy and the role played by this small elite class in shaping the cultural destiny of the antebellum South.”

Contents Introduction

PART I: THE COLONIAL LEGACY Revolutionary Slaveholders

PART II: THE MARKET CULTURE

Master-class Pluralism The Slaveholder’s Pilgrimage The Convenient Sin Freedom and Bondage

PART III: PLANTATIONS, PLEBIANS, AND PATRIARCHS

Factories in the Fields Masters of Tradition

Epilogue: The Slaveholder’s Revolution

APPENDIX, NOTES AND BILBLIOGRAPHY Appendix: Sample of Slaveholders from the 1850 Census

Reviews Historian Julia Floyd Smith writing in The Florida Historical Quarterly considers The Ruling Race “a most provocative study of the slaveowning class,” and “a scholarly contribution” to the topic.Smith, 1984 p. 511

Joseph P. Reidy, writing in The Journal of Negro History, considers The Ruling Race retrogressive in perspective, especially in its emphasis on the slaveholding class in lieu of offering perspectives primarily "through the eyes of the slaves.”Reidy, 1983 p. 95, p. 97

Terming the book “puzzling” and “a jumble of logical and historical fallacies," Reidy takes particular issue with Oates’s arguments challenging historian Eugene D. Genovese’s position on Paternalism among slaveholding elites, while accusing Oates of intellectual sleigh-of-hand in formulating his arguments.Reidy, 1983 p. 95: “Despite professions to the contrary, Oakes aims primarily to discredit Eugene D. Genovese's interpretation of slavery…” And p. 96: “While affirming at the outset his agreement that Genovese’s view that paternalism had nothing to do with kind treatment, he later argues from precisely such a standpoint in attempting to debunk Genovese.”And p. 97: “]N]o serious study of the antebellum South can take slaves for granted, or, in this case, offhandedly dismiss them with lip service toward the important findings of recent scholarship.”

Theme

The thesis of The Ruling Race emerges from arguments that Paternalism among Southern slaveowning elites in the late colonial period was displaced by the rise of petty-bourgeois entrepreneurial slaveowners in the post- Revolutionary period.Smith, 1984 p. 509Oates, 1982 Introduction p. xi

The members of these upperwardly mobile entrepreneurs who owned less than twenty slaves—often as few as three or four —embraced both white-supreacist traditions as well those of political democracy. These two tenets became inextricably linked in their struggle for wealth and social status: “The gospel of prosperity and the defense of bondage were inseparable…”Oates, 1982 p. 130: “...joined in symbiotic relation.” Julia Floyd Smith writes:

Political dissonance was inevitable when Southern liberalism, forged in the War for Independence, were confronted by the Unionist antislavery movement: “How could the slaverholder’s ideology…reinforce simultaneously their devotion to black slavery and to democratic freedom? It is here, in the triumph of the slaveholders’ liberalism, that the legacy of slavery becomes a truly American dilemma.”Oates, 1982 Introduction p. xi

Footnotes

Sources Oakes, James. 1982. The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. Reidy, Joseph P.. 1983. Review: “The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders by James Oakes.” The Journal of Negro History , Winter, 1983, Vol. 68, No. 1, pp. 95-97. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Ill. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2717463 Accessed 11 June, 2026. Smith, Julia Floyd. 1984. Review: “The Ruling Race, a History of American Slaveholders by James Oakes.” The Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 62, No. 4 (Apr., 1984), pp. 509-511. Florida Historical Society. https://www.jstor.org/stable/30146602 Accessed 11 June, 2026.