USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -The wealthy plantation owners were families that were slave owners. They made their money by making the slaves to do their work and get much profit in return. Their population was only about 1, 700 but was the highest class in the southern colonies. Slavery played a role in all the southern colonies.

Detailed explanation-2: -Southern Class Structure The wealthy plantation slave owners were the top social tier. The bulk of landowners was yeoman farmers. They were both white and black, were mostly not slaveholders, and either worked their farms as a family or hired workers and sharecroppers.

Detailed explanation-3: -The social structure of the Southern Colonies became increasingly stratified into three distinct classes: planters, servants, and slaves.

Detailed explanation-4: -An individual who owned a plantation was known as a planter. Historians of the antebellum South have generally defined “planter” most precisely as a person owning property (real estate) and 20 or more slaves.

Detailed explanation-5: -Thus after time, a plantation came to describe large areas of land that were devoted to agriculture, rather than a new settlement or colony. By the end of the 1600s, the Virginia tobacco economy was thriving. Tobacco profits helped to buy indentured servants and slaves.