# data[].attributes.body
- small farmers had little or no education
- few schools and churches
- large plantation owners and wealthy class of planters controlled most of South

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- steamships and railroads
- steamships were on rivers
- railroads expanded in the South, not as much as in the North though

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- Southerners lived on farms in spread out communities
- small towns along the banks of rivers and the coasts
- only a few large cities developed as trading centers
- plantations became self-sufficient like small

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- 12 million people by 1860 (one-third were slaves)
- only one-fourth of Southerners owned slaves
- mostly independent and tenant farmers, laborers, and frontier families

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- based on agriculture
- cash crops were cotton, tobacco, rice, sugar cane, and indigo
- plantations were supported by slave labor
- invention of cotton gin made cotton, "king" of the southern economy

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- fertile soil
- broad, slow rivers
- Appalachian Mountains
- vast areas of farmland

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- warm summers
- mild winters
- much rain