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| | Guide Introduction: Records of Ante-Bellum Southern PlantationsSeries M: (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09) |
 | | The impact of the ante-bellum southern plantations on the lives of their fl and white inhabitants, as well as on the political, economic, and cultural life of the South as a whole, is one of the most fascinating and controversial problems of present-day American historical research. |
 | | Depending upon the labor of slaves who constituted the great majority of the American fl population, the plantations were both homes and business enterprises for a white, southern elite. |
 | | They were the largest, the most commercialized, and on the whole, the most efficient and specialized agricultural enterprises of their day, producing the bulk of the South's staple crops of tobacco, cotton, sugar, rice, and hemp. |
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