same from France , not a fking clue of who those people are , <| sep |> a big ol pupper <| sep |> although the majority of wealth was generated by slavery . Your point is a bit like saying at manufacturing ' s peak right now only a minority of americans owned factories . also if you think about it women would not be the slave owners only men , so actually 12 % of households . and then thats not counting children , even grown ones would probably work the plantation to some capacity lets assume three kids so now we ' re up to 24 % of household held slaves . Then we have to consider higered hands , while not owners made their livelihoods as employees of the plantation add another three and now 42 % make their living directly off the sweat of slaves . add in the spending from all of these people and I ' d say half of all people in the south were reliant on slavery for their livelyhoods . Probably more as cotton was the main export of the united states , so all of that wealth would have passed though a slave owners hands first , despite only being 6 % of the population .