Changes

==South==

==South==

From the travel accounts of [[Frederick Law Olmsted]] in the 1850s through the early-twentieth-century interpretations of historians [[William E. Dodd]] and [[Ulrich B. Phillips]] common southerners were portrayed as minor players in the antebellum period. Romantic portrayals, especially [[Margaret Mitchell]]'s ''Gone with the Wind'' (1937) and its 1939 film ignored them. Novelist [[Erskine Caldwell]]'s ''Tobacco Road,'' portrayed the degraded condition of whites dwelling beyond the great plantations.

From the travel accounts of [[Frederick Law Olmsted]] in the 1850s through the early-twentieth century interpretations of historians [[William E. Dodd]] and [[Ulrich B. Phillips]] common southerners were portrayed as minor players in the antebellum period. Romantic portrayals, especially [[Margaret Mitchell]]'s ''Gone with the Wind'' (1937) and its 1939 film ignored them. Novelist [[Erskine Caldwell]]'s ''Tobacco Road,'' portrayed the degraded condition of whites dwelling beyond the great plantations.

The major challenge to the negative view came from historian [[Frank Lawrence Owsley]] in ''Plain Folk of the Old South'' (1949). His book and followup studies ignited a long historiographical debate. Owsley started with the writings of [[Daniel R. Hundley]] who in 1860 had defined the southern middle class as "farmers, planters, traders, storekeepers, artisans, mechanics, a few manufacturers, a goodly number of country school teachers, and a host of half-fledged country lawyers, doctors, parsons, and the like."  To find these people Owsley turned to the name-by-name files on the manuscript federal census.  Owsley's ''Plain Folk of the Old South,'' says Vernon Burton, is, ''one of the most influential works on southern history ever written.''  Using their own newly invented codes they turned into data bases the manuscript federal census returns, tax and trial records, and local government documents and wills. ''Plain Folk'' argued that southern society was not dominated by planter aristocrats, but that yeoman farmers played a significant role in it. The religion, language, and culture of these common people created a democratic "plain folk" society. Critics say he overemphasized the size of the southern landholding middle class while excluding the large class of poor landless and slaveless white southerners.<ref>Hyde (2005)</ref> Owsley assumed that shared economic interests united southern farmers without considering the vast difference inherent in the planters' commercial agriculture versus the yeomen's subsistence life style.

The major challenge to the negative view came from historian [[Frank Lawrence Owsley]] in ''Plain Folk of the Old South'' (1949). His book and followup studies ignited a long historiographical debate. Owsley started with the writings of [[Daniel R. Hundley]] who in 1860 had defined the southern middle class as "farmers, planters, traders, storekeepers, artisans, mechanics, a few manufacturers, a goodly number of country school teachers, and a host of half-fledged country lawyers, doctors, parsons, and the like."  To find these people Owsley turned to the name-by-name files on the manuscript federal census.  Owsley's ''Plain Folk of the Old South,'' says Vernon Burton, is, ''one of the most influential works on southern history ever written.''  Using their own newly invented codes they turned into data bases the manuscript federal census returns, tax and trial records, and local government documents and wills. ''Plain Folk'' argued that southern society was not dominated by planter aristocrats, but that yeoman farmers played a significant role in it. The religion, language, and culture of these common people created a democratic "plain folk" society. Critics say he overemphasized the size of the southern landholding middle class while excluding the large class of poor landless and slaveless white southerners.<ref>Hyde (2005)</ref> Owsley assumed that shared economic interests united southern farmers without considering the vast difference inherent in the planters' commercial agriculture versus the yeomen's subsistence life style.