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"Antebellum" is an expression derived from Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
 that means "before war" (ante, "before," and bellum, "war").

In United States history and historiography
Historiography

Historiography is the aspect of semiotics that is the study of how knowledge of the past, recent or distant, is obtained and transmitted. Broadly speaking, historiography examines the writing of history and the use of historical methods, drawing upon such elements such as authorship, sourcing, interpretation, style, bias, and audience....
, "antebellum" is commonly used, in lieu of "pre-Civil War," in reference to the period of increasing sectionalism
Sectionalism

In national politics sectionalism is often a precursor to separatism.....
 that led up to the American Civil War
American Civil War

The American Civil War , also known as the War Between the States and several Naming the American Civil War, was a civil war in the United States....
. In that sense, the Antebellum Period is often considered to have begun with the Kansas-Nebraska Act
Kansas-Nebraska Act

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 created the territories of Kansas Territory and Nebraska Territory, opened new lands, repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and allowed settlers in those territories to determine if they would allow slavery within their boundaries....
 of 1854, though it is sometimes stipulated to extend back as early as 1812.






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"Antebellum" is an expression derived from Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
 that means "before war" (ante, "before," and bellum, "war").

In United States history and historiography
Historiography

Historiography is the aspect of semiotics that is the study of how knowledge of the past, recent or distant, is obtained and transmitted. Broadly speaking, historiography examines the writing of history and the use of historical methods, drawing upon such elements such as authorship, sourcing, interpretation, style, bias, and audience....
, "antebellum" is commonly used, in lieu of "pre-Civil War," in reference to the period of increasing sectionalism
Sectionalism

In national politics sectionalism is often a precursor to separatism.....
 that led up to the American Civil War
American Civil War

The American Civil War , also known as the War Between the States and several Naming the American Civil War, was a civil war in the United States....
. In that sense, the Antebellum Period is often considered to have begun with the Kansas-Nebraska Act
Kansas-Nebraska Act

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 created the territories of Kansas Territory and Nebraska Territory, opened new lands, repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and allowed settlers in those territories to determine if they would allow slavery within their boundaries....
 of 1854, though it is sometimes stipulated to extend back as early as 1812. The period after the Civil War is called the Reconstruction era.

Romanticism

— From the opening of the film Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind (film)

Gone with the Wind is a 1939 in film Cinema of the United States drama film-romance film-film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's 1936 in literature Gone with the Wind and directed by Victor Fleming ....
 (1939)

While most western civilizations mark an important turning point during the period of the 1800s due to the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was a period in the late 18th and early 19th centuries when major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, production, and transportation had a profound effect on the socioeconomics and cultural conditions in United Kingdom....
, those who romanticize the Antebellum South credit the widespread destruction of Sherman
William Tecumseh Sherman

William Tecumseh Sherman was an United States soldier, businessman, educator and author. He served as a General officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War , for which he received recognition for his outstanding command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the "scorched earth" policies that he implemente...
's March to the Sea from Atlanta
Atlanta, Georgia

Atlanta is the Capital and most populous city in Georgia , as well as the 33rd largest city in the United States of America with a population of 519,145....
 to the Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions; with a total area of about 106.4 million square kilometres . It covers approximately one-fifth of the Earth's surface....
 and the military occupation of the defeated Confederacy
Confederate States of America

The Confederate States of America formed as the government set up from 1861 to 1865 by eleven Southern United States U.S. state of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S....
 by Union
Union (American Civil War)

During the American Civil War, the Union was a name used to refer to the Federal government of the United States of the United States, which was supported by the twenty-three states which were not part of the secession attempt by the 11 states that formed the Confederate States of America....
 forces during the period termed Reconstruction implemented in Florida
Florida

Florida is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States of the United States, bordering Alabama to the northwest and Georgia to the northeast....
, Tennessee
Tennessee

Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States United States. In 1796, it became the sixteenth state to join the United States....
, or the Trans-Mississippi
Trans-Mississippi

The Trans-Mississippi was the geographic area west of the Mississippi River during the 19th century, containing the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri and Texas, and the Indian Territory ....
 states, instead.

More than any other single American work, Margaret Mitchell
Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell Marsh , popularly known as Margaret Mitchell, was an United States of America author, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1937 for her novel Gone with the Wind....
's 1936 novel, Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind

Gone with the Wind is a romantic drama and the only novel by Margaret Mitchell. The story follows Scarlett O'Hara, the daughter of a plantation owner in Georgia during and after the Civil War....
 and the subsequent 1939 film, have permanently altered historical perspective and fixed a slanted popularized image of pre-Civil War American history and are good examples of the romanticized view. The romanticized view looks back on the Antebellum Period with sentimental nostalgia, as an idealized pre-industrial highly-structured genteel and stable agrarian society, in contrast to the anxiety and struggle of modern life. The issue of slavery is largely ignored in Gone with the Wind — although Mitchell does make a point of examining the relationship between the slaves and their masters on the southern plantations. D. W. Griffith
D. W. Griffith

David Llewelyn Wark "D. W." Griffith was a premier pioneering Academy Award-winning American film director. He is best known as the director of the groundbreaking 1915 film The Birth of a Nation and the subsequent film Intolerance ....
's 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation
The Birth of a Nation

The Birth of a Nation , is a 1915 in film silent film directed by D. W. Griffith; one of the most innovative of Cinema of the United States....
, romanticized the pre-war South in a very similar way.

Laws against slaves

Fugitive Slave Act: An act where suspected runaway slaves (who were not necessarily so) could be forced to return south to their home plantations

Architecture

The term antebellum is also used to describe the architecture of the pre-war South. Many Southern plantation houses use this style, including:
  • Monmouth Plantation : Natchez, Mississippi
  • Boone Hall
    Boone Hall

    The Boone Hall Plantation and Gardens is an antebellum cotton plantation located in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina near Charleston, South Carolina and listed on the National Register of Historic Places....
     : near Charleston, South Carolina. Built in 1936, but in the antebellum style.
  • The Hermitage (Tennessee)
  • Longwood (Natchez, Mississippi)
    Longwood (Natchez, Mississippi)

    Longwood, also known as Nutt's Folly, is an historic antebellum Octagon house located at 140 Lower Woodville Road in Natchez, Mississippi, Mississippi, USA....
  • Nottoway Plantation
    Nottoway Plantation

    Nottoway Plantation, also known as Nottoway Plantation House is located in White Castle, Louisiana. This home was completed in 1859 for the John Hampton Randolph family....
  • Belle Grove Plantation : Considered to be the largest plantation house ever built in the South
  • Orton Plantation
    Orton Plantation

    The Orton Plantation is a historic Southern United States plantation in the Smithville Township, Brunswick County, North Carolina of Brunswick County, North Carolina, North Carolina, United States....
  • Rosedown Plantation
    Rosedown Plantation

    Rosedown Plantation, also known as Rosedown Plantation State Historic Site, outside St. Francisville, Louisiana, is one of the most intact, documented examples of a domestic plantation complex in the South....
  • Oak Alley Plantation
    Oak Alley Plantation

    Oak Alley Plantation is a historic plantation located on theMississippi River in the town of South Vacherie, Louisiana,United States of America....
  • Belle Meade Plantation
    Belle Meade Plantation

    Belle Meade Plantation, located in Belle Meade, Tennessee, is an historic plantation mansion and its grounds that today function as a museum.In 1807, Virginian John Harding bought Dunham's Station log cabin and 250 acres on the Natchez Trace....
  • Waverly
    Waverley (West Point, Mississippi)

    Waverley, sometimes also known as Waverly, is a mansion in Clay County, Mississippi, 10 miles west of West Point, Mississippi.It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1973....
  • Carnton Plantation
  • Waveland Plantation
  • Rippavilla Plantation
    Rippavilla Plantation

    Rippavilla Plantation is an historical site and museum located in Spring Hill, Tennessee. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places....
  • Rattle & Snap Plantation
  • Tara Plantation
    Tara Plantation

    Tara, the fictional plantation found in Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind, was located near Jonesborough , Georgia . As the locale of the final, decisive defeat of the Confederate States of America defenders in the Battle of Jonesborough, Jonesboro, with its surrounding farmland, is a location of historical significance....
     (Fictional, From Gone with the Wind)
  • The Old Governor's Mansion
  • Candon Hearth


See also

  • History of the United States (1789-1849)
  • History of the United States (1849-1865)
  • Origins of the American Civil War
    Origins of the American Civil War

    The main explanation for the origins of the American Civil War is Slavery in the United States, especially the issue of the expansion of slavery into the Territories of the United States....


External links