What Is The Limitation Of The Familial Plantation Aristocracy

An Analysis of the Limitation of the Familial Plantation Aristocracy and the “Poor Whites” of the Antebellum South

This historical essay will define the limitations of the familial plantation aristocracy that inhibited the economic freedom of poor whites in the antebellum South. The powerful bloodlines of the plantation aristocracy define some of the major limitations for white men to raise in class status, which often left them poor and disenfranchised,. More so, the myth of the chivalric protection of southern white women within the family unit is defined in the impoverished lives of the lower classes in this economic system. The experiences of Edward Isham will also define the exploitation of poor white laborers as victims of the strict

Traditionally, the southern family has been depicted as a chivalric system of protection for women and the economic well-being of white men in the antebellum south. However, not all white men came from wealthy white aristocratic families. At different times, Isham was able to run his own businesses, but he also had to find work as a laborer when these business failed. In this manner, the value of a white man was primarily gauged by his pedigree/bloodlines, which defined the particular class status of the individual. These tightly knit communities were part of the strict class status that alienated many poor white men without this type of familial connection. One example of North Carolina’s Orange County in the

Isham’s account of his violent upbringing only escalates when he kills a man in Alabama, and eventually, he kills a plantation owner, James Cornelius, for not paying him his wages as a ditch digger. This type of freelance labor system provides evidence that Isham had attempted to become a member of the ownership classes by forming his own business, but the sever restrictions on independent workers by the landowning plantation classes was restricted through bloodlines and family pedigree. In this manner, Isham’s disconnected and dysfunctional family status made him a transient worker from the lower classes with no option to raise his economic circumstances due to the class status restrictions of the family plantation system. Isham’s inability to have a family pedigree defines a major problem in the strict class status mandates of Southern antebellum society, which often alienated large portions of poor white laborers from raising themselves out of