planters tended to move frequently as new and presumably more productive areas opened up to cultivation. The very newness and precariousness of the plantation way of life, and the differences between the reality of that life and the image of it, made many southern planters determined to portray themselves as genteel aristocrats. Having struggled so hard to reach and maintain their positions, they were all the more determined to defend them. Perhaps that was why the defense of slavery and of the South’s “rights” was stronger in the new, booming regions of the lower South and weaker in the more established and less flourishing areas of the Tidewater. ◦Aristocratic Values Wealthy southern whites sustained their image of themselves as aristocrats in many ways. They avoided “coarse” occupations like trade and commerce; those who did not become planters gravitated toward the military, a “suitable” career for men raised in a culture in which medieval knights (as portrayed in the novels of Walter Scott) were a powerful and popular image. The aristocratic ideal found reflection in the definition of a special role for southern white women. White Society in the South Honor Cult of Honor o males adopted an elaborate code of chivalry, which obligated them to defend their “honor,” often through dueling Southern males placed enormous stock in conventional forms of courtesy and respect in their dealings with one another Violations of such forms often brought what seemed to outsiders a disproportionately heated and even violent response Anything that seemed to challenge the dignity, social station, or “manhood” of a white southern male might be the occasion for a challenge to duel Ex. When the South Carolina congressman Preston Brooks beat Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a cane The Southern Lady Subordinate Status of Women o white women in the South occupied roles very similar to those of middle-class white women in the North
Their lives generally centered in the home, where they served as companions to and hostesses for their husbands and as nurturing mothers for their children o Southern men gave importance to defending their women o George Fitzhugh, one of the South’s most important social theorists, wrote in the “Women, like children, have but one right, and that is the right to protection. The right to protection involves the obligation to obey.” o Most women in the south lived on farms, isolated from the public world o These women engaged in spinning, weaving, and other production; they participated in agricultural tasks; they helped supervise the slave workforce o Nearly a quarter of all white women over twenty were completely illiterate; The few female “academies” in the South trained women primarily to be suitable wives Other Burdens o The Southern white birth rate was nearly 20% o higher than that of the nation as a whole, and infant mortality in the region remained higher than elsewhere nearly half the children born in the South in 1860 died before they reached five years of age o Male slaveowners had frequent sexual relationships with the female slaves on their plantations; the children of those unions became part of the plantation labor force The Plain Folk Definition of plain folk men o The typical white southerner was a modest yeoman farmer o owned a few slaves, with whom they worked and lived far more closely than did the larger planters Most (in fact, three-quarters of all white families) owned no slaves usually could not produce enough to allow them to expand their operations or even get out of debt  Limited Educational Opportunities o Southern educational systems provided poor whites with limited learning opportunities  260 southern colleges and universities, public and private, with 25,000 students enrolled  higher proportion of whites were illiterate than in other parts of the country  Hill People