Question

How was life in the South before the Civil War?

Answer 1

Hint: The pre-civil war years from 1820 to 1860 are known as the antebellum years. Complex feudal social hierarchies were a distinct feature of the South before the Civil War.

Complete answer:
The economy of the Southern part of the United States was based on agriculture, plantation systems. Since many people were required for working in these plantations, more slaves were demanded. The South was less industrialized than the North. The distinctive social structure based on slavery and the political hegemony of the elite planter class was a peculiarity of the South before the Civil War times.
The wealth of people was measured by how much land and how many slaves are owned.
Aristocrats were the only ones who were lucky to live in well-flourished settlements. Some rapid growth due to high birth rates and high migration from the Southeast was experienced in the Southwest. Large cities and manufacturing hubs were very less in the South, except in border regions. Thus urban professionals were very rare in the South.
The politics and economics of the region were under the control of slave owners.
The institution of slavery was very common in the South. Slaves were not treated as human beings and exploitation and oppression of the slaves prevailed in the South. They had no control over their own lives or the lives of their children because there were strict rules to ensure that the slaves would fear their owners and the owners used violence to oppress slaves.
This social condition was in fact one of the reasons for emergence of the Civil War.

Note: During the pre-civil war period, there was a boundary, called the Mason-Dixon Line, an imaginary line that divided the country into the North and South of the United States. Originally this boundary is between Maryland and Pennsylvania in the United States.