This is a post I did for Camp Dixie and I thought I would share it on my page. There seems to be quite a bit of information out there about the two classes of people in the old South. According to yankee author Fredrick Law Olmstead and others like him who took his word as gospel, there was the Rich planter class and the Poor whites. These writers seemed to totally ignore the middle class Southerner. I will get into this later but one thing I have found in Plain Folk of the Old South has to do with reconstruction and I would like to share this brief description of the Plain folk during that period with you. Frank Owsley writes that the middle class Southerner had a more balanced economy than that of the planter groups and were obviously a source of strength when the war came. As we know almost all their men..... including the heads of families from 17 to 50 were in military service; but the younger children, boys and girls.... the women and the older men took the place of the absent men in the work and management of their farms and lands. The plantations, however, were not as dependable as the Plain folk during war time because many of their slaves fled to the union lines when they invaded the South and many blacks were forcefully conscripted and made to fight for the union and some did so willingly. This is not to say that all slaves did this but the numbers were enough to paralyze agricultural productions on the plantations. The smaller land holders, on the other had continued to operate provided the families left behind were able to conceal their work stock from the union troops, which was probably not difficult in a country so heavily wooded as the South at that time. It was, however, during the reconstruction period that the plain folk revealed their real vitality and power of survival. Accustomed to every phase of work in any way related to farming and rural life, and often frontier life, they had no such readjustment to make as the planter who had usually little manual skill or experience in manual labor. With an ax, saw, auger, frow, drawing knife and hammer, which might be assembled by a neighborhood pool, these farmers held their house raisings and rebuilt with logs their houses and barns that had been burned during the war. With a sledge hammer and anvil they fashioned crude plows and hoes from the worn out parts of old implements of from scrap iron and steel gathered here and there. The built crude wagons and carts, made horse collars by platting sucks, fashioned harness from hickory saplings with and ax and drawing knife, and made traces and others parts of the harness from old pieces of chain or home tanned leather. Often there would be a shortage of work stock, in which case what few old animals that were left would be passed around from place to place until they were unable to go on. In some cases on record, men hitched themselves to the plow. In this way the plain folk by ingenuity, heartbreaking toil, patient endurance, self denial and physical toughness were able to survive the war and reconstruction and restore their farm economy..... a vital portion of Southern economy. They were able to accomplish all this while the plantation system was in shambles or severely crippled from the devastation of war and the destruction of the slave labor system. It is not too much to say that the plain folk therefore rescued the South from complete and perhaps, final ruin with little or no aid of sympathy from any sources whatsoever outside the borders of their on section. The plain folk were always willing to lend a hand to anyone who needed help..... even to those who had been more well off than they before the war. When I think about these people, the plain folk as Owsley refers to them...... the middle class people of the Old South that so many northern authors have tried to write out of our history ..... I cannot help but admire their determination not only in fighting for the Confederacy..... but also the determination and their uncomplaining willingness to help restore a destroyed and war torn land that was their country and their home. I cannot find the words to express my feelings for these people. I find it impossible for them not to have their place in history. Johnnie McEwen Parker
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 03:08:28 +0000
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