Planter class

The planter class, known alternatively in the United States as the Southern aristocracy, was a racial and socioeconomic caste of pan-American society that dominated 17th and 18th century agricultural markets. The Atlantic slave trade permitted planters access to inexpensive African slave labor for the planting and harvesting of crops such as tobacco, cotton, indigo, coffee, tea, cocoa, sugarcane, sisal, oil seeds, oil palms, hemp, rubber trees, and fruits. Planters were considered part of the American gentry. In the Southern United States, planters maintained a distinct culture, which was characterized by its similarity to the manners and customs of the British nobility and gentry. The culture had an emphasis on chivalry, gentility, and hospitality. The culture of the Southern United States, with its landed plantocracy, was distinctly different from areas north of the Mason–Dixon line and west of the Appalachian Mountains. The northern and western areas were characterized by small landed property, worked by yeoman farmers without the use of slave labor. After the American Civil War (1861–1865), many in the social class saw their wealth greatly reduced, as slavery was abolished in the United States. After emancipation, many plantations were converted to a sharecropping model with African American freedmen working as sharecroppers on the same land which they had worked as slaves before the war. During the Gilded Age, many plantations, no longer viable as agricultural operations, were purchased by wealthy northern industrialists as hunting retreats. Later, some plantations became museums, often on the National Register of Historic Places. Planters were prolific throughout European colonies in North and South America and the West Indies. Members of the class include colonists Robert "King" Carter of Corotoman, William Byrd II of Westover and John Tayloe II of Mount Airy; many signers of the Declaration of Independence, including Benjamin Harrison V, Thomas Nelson, Jr.