An Analysis Of Main Values Of White Middle And Lower Classes In Antebellum South America

This paper mainly discusses the main values of the white middle and lower classes in antebellum south America, including value of democracy in southern agricultural society, cognition and action tendency to the slavery, and views to the rights of federation and sections; while analyzing their cause and deeply expounding the influence of the main values on southern white middle and lower classes in the civil war.In terms of this paper's structure, this paper consists of three main parts, that is, the foreword, the text and the conclusion.The foreword mainly introduces the situation of current research about the history of antebellum south and southern white middle and lower classes, codifies and classifies the materials, and defines some main concepts and explain space-time scope.The text can be divided into three parts: first, it discusses the value of democracy of southern white middle and lower classes and its cause from the southern economic structure。The unbalance of agriculture and industry,and the dominance of slavery plantation economy in Antebellum South make the economic and political power belong to the slaveholders. With the development of nonslaveholders'economy and the awaking of their democratic ideology,they desire more political power.second,it introduces their cognition and action tendency to the slavery, which mainly results from the southern dependence on slavery,which is reflected through the psychological and economic reliance to the slavery. Racism, which is the base of psychological reliance, cooperates nonslaveholders with slavery tightly,and impacts on their vies to slavery.third, it analyzes their views to the rights of federation and sections, which is under the influence of the slaveholders and the confliction between the south and north two sections around slavery. Southern convention of sectionism and southern role in the conflict of federation and section, make nonslaveholders prefer to south in emotion. And contradiction between South and North also influence the view of nonslaveholders on the power of federation and state.The conclusion summarizes briefly the full paper, and on the basis of former illustration, it explains the effect of the southern white middle and lower classes before and in the civil war.