Southern ‘peculiar institution’ was not as race based as commonly thought. The slaves at Arlington and other old plantations became increasingly white as time went on. Slave catchers were often paid a premium for whites that they could kidnap and in the slave states, paperwork could be “improved” to assure that the kidnapped poor whites would be retained as slaves to the mutual profit of the white plantation owner, the judge and the slave catcher. Often the judge was also a plantation owner.