Antebellum South in the context of "North Mississippi"

Eli Whitney Jr. (December 8, 1765 – January 8, 1825) was an American inventor, widely known for inventing the cotton gin in 1793, one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution that shaped the economy of the Antebellum South. Whitney's invention made upland short cotton into a profitable crop, which strengthened the economic foundation of slavery in the United States and prolonged the institution. Despite the social and economic impact of his invention, Whitney lost much of his profits in legal battles over patent infringement for the cotton gin. Thereafter, he turned his attention to securing contracts with the government in the manufacture of muskets for the newly formed United States Army. He continued making arms and inventing until his death in 1825.

Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe (/stoʊ/; June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an American author and abolitionist. She came from the religious Beecher family and wrote the popular novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), which depicts the harsh conditions experienced by enslaved African Americans. The book reached an audience of millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and in Great Britain, energizing anti-slavery forces in the American North, while provoking widespread anger in the South. Stowe wrote 30 books, including novels, three travel memoirs, and collections of articles and letters. She was influential both for her writings as well as for her public stances and debates on social issues of the day.

Tallulah (/təˈluːlə/ tə-LOO-lə) is a city in, and the parish seat of, Madison Parish in northeastern Louisiana, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 6,286, down from 7,335 in 2010.

As this was historically a center of agriculture since the antebellum years, producing cotton and pecans, Tallulah and the parish have long had majority-African American populations. The small city is now nearly 77 percent African American; the surrounding parish is 60 percent black. Mechanization and industrial agriculture have reduced the number of jobs, and many residents have moved since the mid-20th century to larger cities with more opportunities.

Lynching was the occurrence of extrajudicial killings that began in the United States' pre–Civil War South in the 1830s and had mostly ended by time of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, although instances occurred as late as 1981. Although the victims of lynchings were members of various ethnicities, after roughly 4 million enslaved African Americans were emancipated, they became the primary victims of lynchings by white Southerners. Lynchings in the U.S. reached their height from the 1890s to the 1920s, and they primarily victimized ethnic minorities. Most of the lynchings occurred in the American South, as the majority of African Americans lived there, but racially motivated lynchings also occurred in the Midwest and the border states of the Southwest, where Mexicans were often the victims of lynchings. In 1891, the largest single mass lynching (11) in American history was perpetrated in New Orleans against Italian immigrants.

Lynchings followed African Americans with the Great Migration (c. 1916–1970) out of the American South, and were often perpetrated to enforce white supremacy and intimidate ethnic minorities along with other acts of racial terrorism. A significant number of lynching victims were accused of murder or attempted murder. Rape, attempted rape, or other forms of sexual assault were the second most common accusation; these accusations were often used as a pretext for lynching African Americans who were accused of violating Jim Crow era etiquette or engaged in economic competition with Whites. One study found that there were "4,467 total victims of lynching from 1883 to 1941. Of these victims, 4,027 were men, 99 were women, and 341 were of unidentified gender (although likely male); 3,265 were Black, 1,082 were white, 71 were Mexican or of Mexican descent, 38 were American Indian, 10 were Chinese, and 1 was Japanese."

"The Duplicity of Hargraves" is a short story by the American writer William Sydney Porter, better known by his pen name O. Henry. The story was featured in The Junior Munsey, February 1902, and republished in the volume Sixes and Sevens (1911).

The story features Major Pendelton Talbot, a romanticized figure representing the antebellum South.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a picaresque novel by American author Mark Twain that was first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United States in February 1885. It is commonly named among the Great American Novels, and it is among the first in major American literature to be written throughout in vernacular English, characterized by local color regionalism. Being the direct sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, it is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, the narrator of two other later Twain novels (Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective) and a friend of Tom Sawyer.

The book is noted for "changing the course of children's literature" in the United States for the "deeply felt portrayal of boyhood". It is also known for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. Set in a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist over 20 years before the work was published, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing satire on entrenched attitudes, particularly racism.

The culture of the Southern United States, Southern culture, or Southern heritage, is a subculture of the United States. From its many cultural influences, the South developed its own unique customs, dialects, arts, literature, cuisine, dance, and music. The combination of its unique history and the fact that many Southerners maintain—and even nurture—an identity separate from the rest of the country has led to it being one of the most studied and written-about regions of the United States.

From the 17th century until the mid-19th century, the central role of agriculture and slavery during the colonial period and antebellum era economies made society stratified according to land ownership. This landed gentry made culture in the early Southern United States differ from areas north of the Mason–Dixon line and west of the Appalachians. The upland areas of the South were characterized by yeoman farmers who worked on their small landed property with few or no slaves, while the lower-lying elevations and Deep South was a society of more plantations worked by African slave labor. Events such as the First Great Awakening (1730s–1750s) would strengthen Protestantism in the South and United States as a whole. Communities would often develop strong attachment to their churches as the primary community institution.

Middle Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of Tennessee that composes roughly the central portion of the state. It is delineated according to state law as 41 of the state's 95 counties. Middle Tennessee contains the state's capital and largest city, Nashville, as well as Clarksville, the state's fifth largest city, and Murfreesboro, the state's sixth largest city and largest suburb of Nashville. The Nashville metropolitan area, located entirely within the region, is the most populous metropolitan area in the state, and the Clarksville metropolitan area is the state's sixth most populous. Middle Tennessee is both the largest, in terms of land area, and the most populous of the state's three Grand Divisions.

Geographically, Middle Tennessee is composed of the Highland Rim, which completely surrounds the Nashville Basin. The Cumberland Plateau is located in the eastern part of the region. Culturally, Middle Tennessee is considered part of the Upland South. Commodity crops such as cotton and tobacco were cultivated by migrant settlers in the region in the antebellum era, who were largely dependent on the labor of enslaved African Americans. In addition, planters bred and trained livestock, such as the world-famous Tennessee Walking Horse, which was developed as a breed in the region during this time.

West Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of Tennessee that roughly comprises the western quarter of the state. The region includes 21 counties between the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers, delineated by state law. Its geography consists primarily of flat lands with rich soil and vast floodplain areas of the Mississippi River. Of the three regions, West Tennessee is the most sharply defined geographically, and is the lowest-lying. It is both the least populous and smallest, in land area, of the three Grand Divisions. Its largest city is Memphis, the state's second most populous city.

West Tennessee was originally inhabited by the Chickasaw, and was the last of the three Grand Divisions to be settled by Europeans. The region officially became part of the United States with the Jackson Purchase in 1818, 22 years after Tennessee's statehood. As part of the Mississippi River basin, West Tennessee enjoys rich soil that led to large-scale cotton farming during the antebellum period that was heavily dependent on slave labor. As a result, it forms the northwestern tip of the Black Belt.

The Wilmot Proviso was an unsuccessful 1846 proposal in the United States Congress to ban slavery in territory acquired from Mexico in the Mexican–American War. The conflict over the Wilmot Proviso was one of the major events leading to the American Civil War.

Congressman David Wilmot of Pennsylvania first introduced the proviso in the House of Representatives on August 8, 1846, as a rider on a $2,000,000 appropriations bill intended for the final negotiations to resolve the Mexican–American War (this was only three months into the two-year war). It passed the House largely on sectional lines between a generally anti-slavery North in favor and a pro-slavery South against, foreshadowing coming conflicts. It failed in the Senate, where the South had greater representation. The proviso was reintroduced in February 1847 and again passed the House and failed in the Senate. In 1848, an attempt to make it part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo also failed. Sectional political disputes over slavery in the Southwest continued through the Compromise of 1850.