Well the south was famously un-industrialized compared to the north. So while there were a few proletarian whites, the majority of the non-slave owning white people were still small farmers. How was it for them? Well the aristocratic plantation class basically rigged the Southern political system to keep them out of the process. They were all gerrymandered so that their votes didn't matter compared to the votes of the planters and of course the planters used racism to keep the poor whites on their side.

These poorer whites were also forced onto the marginal farming land in the mountains and hills while the plantations got the best flatland. These farmers often struggled to turn a profit in these crappy areas which is way so many of them were eager to move west and kill native peoples and take their land. This inequality did produce a level of resentment between the white classes in the south. You were looked down upon as a "hill billy" by the planters and a poorer white couldn't enter that community. Even if you got rich you wouldn't have the right family connections. The poor whites thought that the system was rigged against them (it was) and that they couldn't compete with slave labor.

When the civil war broke out many Pro-Union irregulars (19the century guerilla fighters ) were recruited out of the mountain areas to fight the slavers. Not necessarily out of a desire to see slaves free, though some did want that, but because these poor whites knew that they were being marginalized and wanted more political representation and more fair treatment. But also a lot of poor whites totally bought the "fighting for muh rights" shit and died for the slavers in the thousands.

Andrew Johnson was actually one of these poor southern whites from the mountains. He always desired to enter that upper class of planters but they never accepted him. So he sided with the union during the war. The reason he was such a shit president is because he thought if he gave the slavers pardons they would accept him as one of their own. They didn't.

Tell that guy to fuck off, if that reminds him of a happier time, he's never been happy. He would have been illiterate and would have died of a stubbed toe getting infected.

It's the same shit as people wanting to go back to Ancient Rome or whatever. Motherfucker, if you did, you'd immediately be enslaved because you'd look like some weird foreigner and you'd be easy to trick because you'd have no clue what's going on.

Small-holders always suffer under slave/serf regimes since they can't compete with the planter class (due to economies of scale and the aristocratic control of the state apparatus). There's also very little demand for domestic industry due to the high inequality (planters could only consume so much, and preferred imported luxury goods over local ones). That means a limited support for artisan/professional strata (i.e., "the middle class".)

I'd want to source this, but the non-slaver whites weren't very well off in the antebellum south (and were drafted as cannon fodder during the war). This is why you had pro-Union rebellions in the CSA's periphery, like in Appalachia, and (relatively) pro-Union Southerners like Andrew Johnson who saw themselves as representing the white small-holder class.

when i taught antebellum us history, a core point i repeated was that slavery was bad for EVERYONE except slave-owners (and even then, it was bad for them on a moral level). poor southern whites couldn't compete with their neighbors who don't have to pay laborers, and always missed out on the best opportunities. tell this guy to try to start up his own version of walmart next to a walmart and see how that goes.

as is said by others in here better, it was shit. i also understand that whites were required to have guns and were pressed into militias to put down the increasing number of insurrectionary events with constant stories of how any slave rebellion would leave everyone dead. of course, any white person doing anything like teaching a slave to read or abscond or whatever was also made an example of.

i think a lot of this is discussed in Zinn's People's History, but some may also be in the chapter about Virginia's Great Dismal in AKPress' Dixie Be Damned. that's a kickass book, by the way. the stories of the south's insurrectionary past is one that has been very successfully suppressed to keep it a very cheap, diverse and massive labor pool.

but, back to the question: basically, it sounds like unless you were a complete bootlicking kool-aid drinker, it sucked. and even if you were a sniveling shitheel, it probably still sucked.

In Defense of Looting has good takes about this that I'm about to explain poorly.

Non-planter white southerners had very little power politically or economically, but were consoled by their 1. not being slaves, and 2. promise of the rewards of westward colonial genocide.

So southern aristocrats wanted to be a slave empire in the way that Europe was and make the 'west' into endless slave plantations, but the north wanted to make the 'west' a white settler colonial state with homesteading and industrial labor. These things are kinda at odds with one another, cause that homesteader labor was pretty racistly organized and didn't want to be undercut by slave labor and the plantation capitalist south needed more land to build more plantations to enslave more people to make a line go up. Plus northern capitalists make a lot of it's money acting as a stand in for Britain in the Triangle Trade and collecting colonial profits from the southern states (+ the Caribbean).

Pre-Civil war slavery being outlawed was not uncommon in New England and Europe, although that comes with some serious caveats, and the south used a "the north will make slavery illegal" line as a racist way to get support from non-planter whites (and whites in the north). There were also a lot of slave uprisings in this time for a lot of reasons which destroyed the economies of the south and north because both economies were based on slave labor. Then the war happened and non-planter southerners had a "rich man's war" vibe. Many deserted, but also many didn't.

I guess that because this is an internet person it's not really that important to be super correct or thorough in your response. I liked this book though.

All the other great points aside, if you want a cheap dunk point out that life during the confederacy was fucking awful because it only existed for 4 years during a war it was losing