Editing Lawrence County (section)

==== IV. Social structure, slavery, and race to 1850 ====
Social structure in Lawrence County by 1850 was stratified along lines typical for a southern interior county. A base of yeoman farmers and smallholders constituted the largest numeric group; they often held little or no enslaved labor and practiced mixed farming. Above them stood slaveholders—ranging from middling planters to larger holders—whose wealth derived from land and enslaved labor. Enslaved people performed field, domestic, skilled, and artisanal labor; 1850 was the first census year with separate slave schedules, and the aggregate data show a county with a significant enslaved population where fertile tracts supported cotton and other labor-intensive crops. By 1860 (a decade after our chronological cutoff) county totals recorded over 3,600 enslaved persons—an indication of how, once economic incentives favored cotton and marketable commodities, slaveholding expanded in the county.