And since heads of households were the ones who owned property (women rarely did, and children didn't either) the percentage of families owning slaves could amount to as much as 1 in 3.
Even if there is some softness or weakness in the figures given, it's clear that many Alabama families owned or aspired to own slaves.
Have you ever heard of the Black Belt? That’s not named for the slaves, but rather the soil.
There were YUGE plantations were the slave to owner population was 10,000 to one.
Macon county, the county next to mine in Alabama, is 93 percent black. It’s in the black belt. My county is where the Appalachians ended. It’s 23 percent black.
Basically, my county only had 2 big plantations, and the rest were piney woods white folks with no slaves. The counties to the North of me had even less, as they’re even more mountainous. The population of these counties are 85-90% white. But Macon and Bullock counties to the South had all the slaves because of the enormous plantations. Not many whites lived there then, or even today.
You look at the demographics today, and things haven’t really changed much from 1860.