Large Farms: Cotton and Slavery

How many southern farms with over 500 acres qualified as homestead farms when the Homestead Act was passed by Congress in 1862? Where do you think the planters with the largest number of slaves (over 50) were concentrated?

Answers:

• None:  these large southern plantations were 3.1 times larger than the 160 acre homestead farm in the north
• the largest number of slaves were found in the same areas where plantations with over 500 acres were located, especially were they represented 10 percent and more of all farms in a county

Created by Ingolf Vogeler on 30 April 1996; last revised on 07 Mar 2005.