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Racism in the south Essay

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Antebellum is defined at Dictionary.com as "Belonging to the period before a war, especially the American Civil War."1 In the Antebellum period in the South, many people owned slaves.
In the south, plantations were "the most basic unit and the most vital element of the Southern antebellum economy."2 But at the heart of these plantations were the slaves. So vicariously, the slaves of the South were the most vital part of the Southern economy.
Slaves, although taken from Africa, were still able to hold onto their religious traditions and beliefs. They would incorporate their traditions into the Christian belief structure that the south had already setup. They kept their dances, chants, songs, etc. by disguising them into …show more content…

"The main reason for the purchasing of slave women had definitely been for reasons that involved the slaveholder's sexual desires rather than the female's economic potential."2

After a while, the male to female ratio of which the plantation owners bought evened out, and this actually did better for the plantation owners than they probably would have expected. As they bought more females and males, they would procreate, making more slave children for the prosperous growth of their plantation.
Slaves were able to marry, and make families with each other on plantations. Hence "A married male slave had more responsibility to his mate and children and therefore would be more deterred from trying to escape."2 This fact made the plantation owners job a lot easier by not having to worry about escaping slaves as much. This marriage not only helped settle down the male slaves, but also passed on the African American heritage, and values. The slaves were allowed to name their own children, enabling the black community to thrive through the emancipation.
When most think of the south and slavery, they think of everyone having huge plantations filled with hundreds of slaves. Quite the contrary, only about ¼ of the southern whites didn't even own slaves, far less hundreds. And of those ¼, there only about 12% owned more than 20 of them. Although most southern whites that didn't own slaves, most did

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