In addition to having his immense cotton plantations cultivated by slave labor, the slave-owner soon learned that he could utilize these slaves as carpenters, painters, plasterers, bricklayers, blacksmiths and in all other fields of industrial occupations and usefulness.

Thus the whites who depended upon their labor for a living along those lines had their field of opportunity very much curtailed.

Although the slaves were not responsible for this condition, the fact that they were there and were thus utilized, created a feeling of bitterness and antipathy on the part of the laboring whites which could not be easily wiped out.
In the second place, the whites of that class were not at that time as ambitious, politically, as were the aristocrats.

They had been held in political subjection so long that it required some time for them to realize that there had been a change.

At that time they, with a few exceptions, were less efficient, less capable, and knew less about matters of state and governmental administration than many of the ex-slaves.