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The Great Planters Of The Southern Colonies: Social Class

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The Southern Colonies, complete with beautiful plantation houses, and indigo and tobacco fields for as far as the eye can see. It sounds like a truly great and majestic place to settle in the New World -- and for some, it was. However, it was not as glamorous for some as it was for others. It all depended on a person’s social class. There are three main social groups found in the Southern Colonies. The highest class was the Great Planters, the middle class was the Yeoman Farmers, and the lowest class was the Frontier Families. The highest class in the Southern Colonies was the Great Planters. The Great Planters owned plantations in the South, and they were considered to be elite. In order to become a Great Planter, a person had to own at least five hundred acres of land and twenty slaves. The owner of a plantation was typically very rich. They lived refined lives in beautiful colonial style mansions. Great Planters were not only economically and socially successful, but they also held political control of the colonies. The first American millionaire, Peter Manigault, was a Great Planter in South Carolina. He owned the largest estate on record, and his assets totaled to $2.5 million. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are two more examples of influential men who grew up in a family of Great Planters. As far as the …show more content…

Yeoman Farmers worked on their own small tracts of land that they owned. These small farms would be tended to primarily by the family. It is said that the Yeoman Farmer represents the ideal morals of an American: virtuous, outspoken, hardworking, independent, and honest. The Yeoman Farmers posed as a threat to the power of the Great Planters. This began when the Yeoman Farmers found their way into the political office, and sat is popular assemblies. Thomas Jefferson became an advocate of the Yeoman Farmers, and credited them for being the “carriers of America’s Republican

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Thomas Jefferson was a strong believer of the yeoman farmers and believed their independent farms to be of republican values that he believed in. The yeoman farmers began

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While the Southern Colonies were known for having numerous plantations, they had few towns and cities. Plantation owners wanted to use as much land as possible for growing cash crops and were not interested in building towns. However, by the mid 1700s, settlements along the Atlantic coast grew into large towns. These large towns all had the same thing in common--good harbors for trade. Port cities became popular when both buyers and sellers needed a place to exchange goods.

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They, not the rich are our dependence for continued freedom.” The “common man” should be the center of the U.S. economy. Since small, independent farmers were their own bosses, Jefferson believed that they would work hard and create prosperous lives for themselves. This would allow the entire nation to prosper in whole. These individuals are self-sufficient, thus limiting the powers of the federal government.

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Religion in the Southern colonies wasn’t as big of a deal like it was in the Middle, and Northern colonies. The main religion in the south was, Anglican. The economy in the south was like no other. The South has warm weather and a good amount of rainfall. The two main crops included: tobacco and rice.

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Harper Lee’s, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” she demonstrates throughout the book that the characters all fall into some sort of social strata. The social strata being divided by race and wealth. Those within Maycomb fall into three categories. People who are ranked at the top, are who are white and have wealth. Those that are ranked near the bottom, are usually black and don't have much wealth.

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In the Southern colonies, children usually started their education at home. (It was not super important to them). The distances between farms and plantations made town schools very hard to get to. Plantation owners regularly hired tutors or house maids to teach boys’ math, classical languages, science, geography, history, etiquette, and plantation management. When the boys had the opportunity to have an education outside of the home the schools were quite strict and often had much punishment for doing the wrong.

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The slave colony I’ve chosen to focus on was in the state of Georgia in the United States. The European power that controlled it was the British. The conditions of the Georgian slaves differed depending on their masters and their place of residence. Most of the Georgian slave population worked on cotton plantations, but there was also a portion that worked on rice plantations. The slaves who worked on cotton plantations usually had some sense of community among themselves, but were surrounded by more white people.

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But the top class of the social class was Freemen, which were all male citizens. Then the class under that is, Metics which were outsiders that could not own land and run industries and businesses. Slaves were the lowest class that didn’t have rights

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Northern colonies started as just state all bunched into one. They are now there own separate states now. The northern colonies are now the states of Plymouth,Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and finally New Hampshire. Plymouth Colony: Plymouth colony was an English colonial venture in North America from the years of 1620 to 1691. The first settlement of the Plymouth Colony was at New Plymouth, a location previously surveyed and named by Captain John Smith.

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1. What is the difference between a colonial farmer & a planter? The difference between a colonial farmer and a planter is a farmer worked in small, family-run farms. Farmers also cleared land, dug ditches, built fences and farm buildings, plowed, and did other heavy labor.

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Housing in the southern colonies depended in your social status. Wealthier families would live on plantations with stone and brick buildings, the slave usually lived on the plantations with their owners. New England colonies had a fair class system mainly made up of a wealthy merchant class. Men were the head of the households in the southern colonies while the women did much of the house work cooking, cleaning, quilting and raising the

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