What made a white southerner a yeoman

Reference no: EM133311906

Question: This is a question that Hayley Lonquist, a former student in this class, posed some years ago. I reproduce it verbatim (and credit her) because she framed this critical issue so well:

Both our Major Problems text and our Norton text discuss the differences between the "planters" and the yeomen farmers in the south. The yeomen were frustrated due to their underrepresentation in politics and the ever-expanding socioeconomic gap between the two classes: "The risks of entering cotton production were becoming too great and the cost of slaves too high for many yeomen to rise in society" (Norton p 280). It also states that by 1860 only 25% of southern families were slaveowners, however the "planters' share of the South's agricultural wealth remained between 90 and 95 percent" (p 280). -in this week's lecture the last picture's caption reads: "In 1850, less than four percent of Southern whites owned twenty or more slaves, a reasonable cutoff for 'planter' status" (Half Slave).

Despite the radical differences between the two, what could be the reason(s) a yeoman farmer would be in favor of slavery?

What made a white Southerner a "yeoman" and what were his chief concerns, his chief aspirations, his values, his worldview generally? Where did slavery fall in the mix? What kinds of interactions did he have with blacks? How did he fit into antebellum Southern society? What were the ties that bound?

Reference no: EM133311906

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