The “Southern Lady”

Affluent Southern white women lived very similar to Northern middle class women. Their lives centered around the home and their families. Even less frequently than in the North did “genteel” southern white women engage in public activities or find income producing employment. In social aspects though southern women lived differently then those in the North. Southern men gave particular importance to the “defense” of women. It most cases white men in the South were even more dominant and the women were even more submissive.

The “Southern Lady” Most Southern women lived on farms so they were very isolated and the family economy was very important which lead the man to be the more dominant of the two. They could not see a world outside of their children and work as a wife as being important. For many white women who lived on modest size farms women engaged in spinning, weaving, and other production; they participated in agricultural tasks; they helped supervise the slave workforce. On large plantations though this would not happen. They were considered a “plantation mistress” became an ornament for her husband than an active part of the economy of the society.

Quote and Picture from a magazine article Man is daring and confident, woman is diffident and unassuming; man is great in action, woman in suffering; man shines abroad, woman at home; man talks to convince, woman to persuade and please; man has a rugged heart, woman a soft and tender one; man prevents misery, woman relieves it; man has science, woman taste; man has judgement, woman sensibility; man is a being of justice, woman of mercy.---Galena (Ill.)Advertiser 7 March 1835.

The “Southern Lady” Southern white women also had less access to education that their northern counterparts. 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. The southern white birth rate was about 20% higher then that of the nation as a whole. The infant death rate was higher also. By the age of five half of the children would die. Slave labor helped women with having to do intensive labor on the fields but it also threatened their relationships with their husbands.

The “Southern Lady” Male slave owners had frequent affairs with their slaves and they bore children that joined the labor force and were constant reminders of their husbands infidelity. Upper class white women in the South were particularly energetic in defending the class lines between themselves in those that were of the poorer class. Most Southerners were referred to as “plain folk” who owned a few slaves, with whom they worked and lived far more closely than did the larger planters. Most in fact ¾ of all white families owned no slaves.

The Plain Folk During the 1850s, the number of non slaveholding landowners increased much faster than the slaveholding landowners. There really was very little hope of any class movement due to the poor education that they were exposed to at this time.

The Plain Folk In 1860 there were 260 southern colleges and universities, and 25,000 students enrolled which were only the very wealthy. This made more then half of the students enrolled in the US. The elementary and secondary schools were inferior to those of the Northeast and a higher proportion of whites were illiterate that in other parts of the country. The majority of the South was a modest farmers who went along with the wealthy really being in control. The Question was why would they go along with this?

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The Plain Folk One group of non slaving owning whites did the. These were southern highlanders, the “hill people” who lived in the Appalachian ranges east of the Mississippi, in the Ozarks in the “back country” areas cut off from the commercial world of the plantation system. They practiced a simple form of subsistence agriculture, owned practically no slaves, and had a proud sense of seclusion. They produced almost no surplus for the market, had little access to money, and often bartered for the goods they could not grow themselves.