What roles did slavery play in the social hierarchy of the South?
What roles did slavery play in Southern culture?
At the peak of slavery in the antebellum South, only about one-third of white families owned slaves. By the time of the Civil War, the proportion of white families that owned slaves had fallen to about one-fourth of all white families. Yet support for the institution of slavery among all whites in the South rich and poor, slave-owners and non-slave-owners remained high through the era of the Civil War.
