And the clock ticks on......
Poor whites embraced the slave power's cause largely based on what would now be called white supremacy.
"... a North Carolina mountaineer wrote to governor Zebulon Vance a letter that expressed the non-slave holder's view perfectly Believing that some able-bodied men ought to stay at home to preserve order, this man set forth his feelings: "We have but little interest in the value of slaves, but there is one matter in this connection about which we have a very deep interest. We are opposed to Negro equality. To prevent this we are willing to spare the last man, down to the point where women and children begin to suffer for food and clothing; when these begin to suffer and die, rather than see them equalized with an inferior race we will die with them. Everything, even life itself, stands pledged to to the cause; but that our greatest strength may be employed to the best advantage and the struggle prolonged let us not sacrifice at once the object for which we are fighting."
-- "The Coming Fury" p. 202-203 by Bruce Catton.
Walt
Since 99.81% of all black people in Texas were slaves then the odds are that if your ancestor ever met a black person then that person was likely to be someone's chattel. Thus he no doubt saw slavery as the right and proper place for a black person to be in, and would possibly resent any attempts to change what he saw as the natural order of things. But your ancestor was not one of the 28.5% of all Texas families that owned slaves. Those families brought a great deal of wealth to Texas and it's not unlikely that your ancestor earned a part of his living selling goods to those slave-holding families. It would certainly have been in his best interest to help protect his customers. So those are some of the ways your non-slave-holding ancestor benefited from the institution.