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The "Slave Power" (often called the "'''Slaveocracy'''") was in common use in the Ante-Bellum era 1840-1860 as a pejorative to identify and denounce the political power of the [[Plantation|slaveholding]] class in the South. The argument was that this small group of rich men had seized control of their own states and was trying to take over the national government in illegitimate fashion to use it to expand and protect slavery.   

The "Slave Power" (often called the "'''Slaveocracy'''") was in common use in the Ante-Bellum era 1840-1860 as a pejorative to identify and denounce the political power of the [[Plantation|slaveholding]] class in the South. The argument was that this small group of rich men had seized control of their own states and was trying to take over the national government in illegitimate fashion to use it to expand and protect slavery.   

The issue was not the treatment of slaves.  It was fear of slave oligarchs. Men and women could differ on scores of issues, hate blacks or like them, denounce slavery as a sin or promise to guarantee its protection in the Deep South, and still attack the "Slaveocracy."  It mattered not where one stood on the other issues. One could still hate the slavemasters with a passion.<ref>Leonard L. Richards, ''Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780-1860'' (2000) p. 3)</ref>

The issue was not the treatment of slaves.  It was fear of slave oligarchs. Men and women could differ on scores of issues, hate blacks or like them, denounce slavery as a sin or promise to guarantee its protection in the Deep South, and still attack the "Slaveocracy."  It mattered not where one stood on the other issues. One could still hate the slavemasters with a passion.<ref>Leonard L. Richards, ''Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780-1860'' (2000) (p. 3)</ref>

The term was popularized by antislavery intellectuals such as John Gorham Palfrey, Josiah Quincy, Horace Bushnell, [[James Shepherd Pike]],  [[Horace Greeley]] and Henry Wilson. They showed through a combination of emotive argument and hard statistical data that the South had long held a disproportionate level of power within the nation.  Did the slave power really exist? Millions in the North thought so, and acted upon it. However the notion was ridiculed by Southerners at the time, and rejected as false by historians of the 1920s and 1930s, who stressed that the South was internally divided before 1850.<ref>See Chauncey S. Boucher, "In Re That Aggressive Slavocracy," ''Mississippi Valley Historical Review'' Vol. 8, No. 1/2 (Jun., 1921), pp. 13-79; Craven (1936)</ref> The idea that the Slave Power existed has partly come back at the hands of [[neoabolitionist]] historians since 1970, and few historians now disagree that it was a powerful factor in the beliefs of Northerners.

The term was popularized by antislavery intellectuals such as John Gorham Palfrey, Josiah Quincy, Horace Bushnell, [[James Shepherd Pike]],  [[Horace Greeley]] and Henry Wilson. They showed through a combination of emotive argument and hard statistical data that the South had long held a disproportionate level of power within the nation.  Did the slave power really exist? Millions in the North thought so, and acted upon it. However the notion was ridiculed by Southerners at the time, and rejected as false by historians of the 1920s and 1930s, who stressed that the South was internally divided before 1850.<ref>See Chauncey S. Boucher, "In Re That Aggressive Slavocracy," ''Mississippi Valley Historical Review'' Vol. 8, No. 1/2 (Jun., 1921), pp. 13-79; Craven (1936)</ref> The idea that the Slave Power existed has partly come back at the hands of [[neoabolitionist]] historians since 1970, and few historians now disagree that it was a powerful factor in the beliefs of Northerners.