The majority of the slavesmales, females, and children-worked in the fields cultivating tobacco, cotton, and other marketable crops. Others were responsible for growing and preparing food for the plantation's residents to eat, or involved in making clothes for them to wear. Such skilled craftsmen as coopers (barrel-makers), blacksmiths, bricklayers, and carpenters lived on the premises. Inside the Great House, the palatial home of the plantation's owners, a staff of slaves cooked and kept the rooms clean and waited upon the owners, while also nursing and frequently raising the owners' children. Slavery, in short, formed the foundation supporting the Southern plantation owners' way of life before the Civil War.
The culture of the Southern propertied elite. The propertied elite of the antebellum South had a distinct culture, and many of its members believed their way of life to be superior to any other. They prided themselves on what they considered to be their refined and gracious society. Northern "Yankees" were held in disdain. To the Southern elite, it seemed that even the upper classes in the North were always grasping for money, more concerned with rapid economic growth than with a high quality of life.
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