Planters, Yeomen, and Tenants
A Milestone Documents E-text
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https://doi.org/10.3735/9781961844520.book.part.059

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Abstract

Many people’s vision of the antebellum South—formed powerfully in the culture by Gone with the Wind and other novels and movies in the same vein—is one of beautiful, prosperous plantations with white-columned houses, cultured young southern belles, and wealthy owners of many African American slaves. The reality was far more complicated. A nineteenth-century writer, Daniel Hundley, famously divided the southern society he saw around him just before the Civil War into gentlemen (planters), middle classes, “southern Yankees” (a derogatory term for those interested mainly in business), “cotton snobs” (nouveau riche planters who were often the sons of southern Yankees), yeomen, “bullies,” poor white trash, and finally slaves.

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