The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 79, July 1975 - April, 1976 Page: 26
528 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
held office on more than one level, and one person (.I percent) served at
the federal level alone. Thus, because a majority of those examined in both
1850 and 186o occupied "grassroots" political positions, the measurements
of wealthholding among political leaders in antebellum Texas are not
biased upward by undue emphasis on holders of the highest federal and
state offices.
The data collected provided a statistical profile of the economic status
of antebellum Texas's political leaders. This information is relatively mean-
ingless, however, unless it is compared to a similar profile of the state's
general population in i85o and I86o, that is, unless it is put in context.
The necessary context is provided by a random sample of approximately
5,000 Texas families from the manuscript census of 185o and an additional
5,000 families from the same source for I86o. For the head of the house-
hold in each sample family, we collected the same data as those described
above for political leaders, thus allowing precise comparison of the two
groups.9
Table i breaks down the general population and the political leaders of
antebellum Texas for both I85o and I86o according to slaveholding-
occupational status: it subdivides both groups into farmers and non-
farmers and at the same time indicates whether they were slaveholders or
non-slaveholders. This table indicates that slaveholding farmers constituted
a much larger proportion of the state's political leaders than they did of
the general population in both 1850 and I86o. Indeed, in 186o slave-
holding farmers were a majority of the political leaders while they were
less than one quarter of the general population. On the other hand, non-
slaveholding farmers, who comprised more than 50 percent of the general
population in both census years, provided only about one-fourth of the
and of the Eighth Census of the United States, i86o, Schedule I and Schedule II, are
housed in the National Archives, Washington, D.C.. The manuscript returns of Schedule
IV-Agriculture, i850 and 186o, are in the Archives Division of the Texas State Library,
Austin.
9The samples of 5,000 families for 1850 and 5,000 for I86o from the manuscript
United States census returns for those years were taken from the area we defined as
"antebellum Texas." (See Table I). A sample of 5,ooo was used because this number is
large enough to reduce sampling error to near zero. The sample was taken at random
by first arranging the counties in random order and then using computer-generated lists
of random numbers to determine which families should be included in the sample. For
example, the first county in the random ordering of counties in 185o was Upshur, and
the first number in the list was five. Therefore, the procedure was to turn through the
free population census for Upshur County until the fifth family was reached, whereupon
basic information was gathered on the head of household in that family. This process
continued through all counties and all 5,000 numbers for I850 and then was repeated
for 186o. Thus, the samples were random and unbiased in that every family in ante-
bellum Texas had an equal chance of being selected.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 79, July 1975 - April, 1976, periodical, 1975/1976; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101203/m1/44/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.