Voting rights of poor whites in the Antebellum South

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Yeah I think the main thing was gerrymandering in favour of the planter class and their slave populations rather than disenfranchisement of poor whites per se, at least by the eve of the Civil War. Some states like South Carolina had the three fifths rule for apportionment in the state legislature, which makes zero sense as it was supposed to be a clause in the federal constitution protecting slave states from free!

W.E.B. DuBois talks a bit about this and poor whites in the antebellum South in general in the first part of his excellent book Black Reconstruction.