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Explain The Four Major Southern White Social Groups In The Antebellum Era

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The four major southern white social groups during the antebellum period were the planters, the small slaveholders, the yeoman, and the people of the pine barrens. These four groups encompassed the majority of Southern white Americans; the people who did not specifically fit within one group usually at least identified with one (Stewart 4).
The planters were the richest citizens, and were generally described as owning twenty or more slaves. Their economic goals were based solely in profit. The cost to run plantations could become very high, especially since they worked to be generally self-sufficient. The planters depended on slavery; the majority of the time a planter’s wealth was determined by the amount of slaves he owned. While many women were disgruntled by the mulatto children born from their unfaithful husbands, even they understood the plantation’s dependence on slaves. Planters generally aligned themselves with the Whig party, and during the Civil War fully supported the Confederacy (Stewart 4-6). …show more content…

They were generally characterized as being younger than those of the planter group and having less than twenty slaves, sometimes even less than ten. Economically some small slaveholders strove to reach the planter class, especially if they were in an area surrounded by planter plantations. However when surrounded by lower class farmers, many small slaveholders chose to remain working on small farms (Stewart 6). While they did support slavery most small slaveholders had only a handful of slaves, sometimes only numbering one or two. Politically, small slaveholders also would have sided with the Confederacy since they depended on the few slaves that they owned (“Social divisions in antebellum North

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