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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.
In his study of Edgefield County, South Carolina, Orville Vernon Burton<ref> Burton (1985)</ref> classified white society into the poor, the yeoman middle class, and the elite. A clear line demarcated the elite, but according to Burton, the line between poor and yeoman was never very distinct. Stephanie McCurry argues, yeomen were clearly distinguished from poor whites by their ownership of land (real property). Yeomen were "self-working farmers," distinct from the elite because they worked their land themselves alongside any slaves they owned. Ownership of large numbers of slaves made the work of planters completely managerial.
In his study of Edgefield County, South Carolina, Orville Vernon Burton<ref> Burton (1985)</ref> classified white society into the poor, the yeoman middle class, and the elite. A clear line demarcated the elite, but according to Burton, the line between poor and yeoman was never very distinct. Stephanie McCurry argues, yeomen were clearly distinguished from poor whites by their ownership of land (real property). Yeomen were "self-working farmers," distinct from the elite because they worked their land themselves alongside any slaves they owned. Ownership of large numbers of slaves made the work of planters completely managerial.
==From yeoman to redneck==
After the Civil War the status of the yeomen fell drastically. Many became sharecroppers or tenants--they worked land owned by landowners in town. In the towns the rising southern middle class rejected the celebration of rural life associated with the yeoman. They denounced as "demagogues" the radical leaders who appealed to the poor farmers, for example [[Ben Tillman|"Pitchfork Ben Tillman]] who was governor and senator from South Carolina. As the poor farmers endorsed lynching of uppity blacks, the middle class townsfolk denounced lynching in the name of [[Law and order]]. Some poor farmers moved to mill towns, especially to work in the textile mills of the Carolinas. The money was much better than on the hard-scrabble farms, but this again represented a fall in social status. By the end of the century the middle class was ridiculing the former yeomen as "rednecks" and "hillbillies."<ref>"Redneck" refers to being sun-burned from worked in the hot fields. "Hillbillies" lived in remote mountain areas. Stephen A. West, ''From Yeoman to Redneck in the South Carolina Upcountry, 1850–1915.'' (2008)</ref>
==See also==
==See also==
* [[The South]]
* [[The South]]