The Migration of the Southern Plain Folk: An Interdisciplinary Synthesis

Abstract

IT IS WELL KNOWN THAT FARMERS AND LIVESTOCK HERDERS-NOT wealthy, slaveholding planters -led the westward movement across the southern frontier, settling the Old Southwest, the lower portions of the Old Northwest, and much of the New Southwest during the antebellum period.1 These farmers and herders, who have been dubbed the by historian Frank L. Owsley, were the true pioneers of the southern frontier. Among the plain folk Owsley included the slaveholding farmers owning fewer than twenty slaves and generally fewer than three hundred acres of land, the more numerous slaveless farmers who usually owned fewer than two hundred acres, and the herders who claimed homesteads but ranged their livestock on unclaimed public lands.2 The plain-folk farmers and herders led the migration across the southern frontier, but they were soon followed by others. In areas where fertile soils or reliable transportation permitted successful cash-crop agriculture to develop, planters settled with their slaves.