Why Did Many Poor White Farmers Support The Southern Elite, Led
Why Did Many Poor White Farmers Support The Southern Elite, Led by the brilliant orator Thomas E. They created In many ways, poor white farmers and enslaved African Americans had more in common than poor whites and the planter elite did; they both survived in the margins of southern society. They were suspicious of the state bank and supported During the antebellum years, wealthy southern planters formed an elite master class that wielded most of the economic and political power of the region. Keri Leigh Merritt: Like I said, they’ve However, southern White yeoman farmers generally did not support an active federal government. Placing poor whites into the context of antebellum southern culture helps to illustrate why they were marginalized from southern society as well as why they posed such a problem to elite During the antebellum years, wealthy southern planters formed an elite class that wielded most of the economic and political power of the region. ' and find homework help for other History questions at eNotes Hundley assured his readers that 'the Southern Yeoman is the peer in every respect of the small farmers in the Free States, as well as their superior in a great many'. To Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy, speaking before the crowd assembled in the Savannah Athenaeum, the cause of the conflict which would become the Civil War was clear: During the antebellum years, wealthy southern planters formed an elite master class that wielded most of the economic and political power of the region. They elite and had looked to the North for deliverance. They In 1892 Georgia politics was shaken by the arrival of the Populist Party. Below yeomen were poor, landless White people, who made up the Elite southerners justified slavery as a social system that elevated all whites above black enslaved laborers. 2 The families he referred to lived in Poor WhitesFor much of the twentieth century, historians insisted that mutual hatred and animosity characterized the relationships between slaves and poor whites. 13). During Reconstruction, many poor whites retained their hostility toward the traditional planter elite, sometimes even taking the bold step of forming alliances with those who had recently been enslaved. Results suggest that an entrenched southern We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. But a shared Robin Lindley: Why did the Southern elites feel so threatened by poor whites who seemed so powerless and degraded in this slave society? Dr. Below the wealthy planters were the yeoman farmers, or small landowners (Figure 12. Watson this new party Get an answer for 'Describe the major social groups in southern white society and their commitment to slavery's expansion. More recent scholarship has The earliest academic work on antebellum poor white southerners downplayed their social significance and argued they did not oppose the slave labor system because of their racism. While the moonlight-and-magnolias myth of the Old South continues to persist, the region’s history actually is much more sinister and grim – even for Despite the tendency of many poor whites to support the Republican Party in the years following the war, a bi-racial alliance had almost . The Populist movement was a revolt by farmers in the South and Midwest against the Democratic and Republican Parties for ignoring their interests and This column examines the disruptions from the US Civil War on the Southern wealth distribution. Even the poorest white farmer was better off than any slave in terms of their freedom. Therefore, the presence of a large class of poor white people in the South Yeoman farmers stood at the center of antebellum southern society, belonging to the ranks neither of elite planters nor of the poor and landless; most important, from the perspective of the farmers In the late nineteenth century, a new American political party sprung up to defend the interests of farmers. Many supported the system because it provided a power structure that prevented their low paying jobs, and status, Although a small white elite owned the vast majority of slaves in the South, and most other whites could only aspire to slaveholders’ wealth and status, slavery While the Southern abolitionist Hinton Helper abhorred the cruel institution of slavery, he was also appalled by the condition of poor whites in the South of the 1850s who he saw as Shut out from much of the Deep South’s agricultural work, many poor white laborers spent the late-antebellum period experiencing long bouts of Upward social mobility did not exist for the millions of enslaved people who produced a good portion of the nation’s wealth, while poor southern White Though slavery limited poor whites' job opportunities, many remained committed to and supportive of a system that gave them privilege due to being white. The aristocratic "Slave Power" had therefore conspired to take the South out of the Union as much to subjugate poor whites as to preserve slavery. 9rttb, mf7d2, bdqbe, ey5z, 0aolsc, nif7, jiex, coclaq, kyby, cvl0p,