Antebellum

"Antebellum" is an expression derived from Latin that means "before war" (ante, "before," and bellum, "war").
In United States history and historiography, "antebellum" is commonly used, in lieu of "pre-Civil War," in reference to the period of increasing sectionalism that led up to the American Civil War. In that sense, the Antebellum Period is often considered to have begun with the Kansas-Nebraska Act 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 (1939)
While most western civilizations mark an important turning point during the period of the 1800s due to the Industrial Revolution, those who romanticize the Antebellum South credit the widespread destruction of Sherman's from Atlanta to the Atlantic Ocean and the military occupation of the defeated Confederacy by Union forces during the period termed Reconstruction implemented in Florida, Tennessee, or the Trans-Mississippi states, instead.
More than any other single American work, Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel, Gone with the Wind 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's 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation, 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 : near Charleston, South Carolina. Built in 1936, but in the antebellum style.
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*Nottoway Plantation
*Belle Grove Plantation : Considered to be the largest plantation house ever built in the South
*Orton Plantation
*Rosedown Plantation
*Oak Alley Plantation
*Belle Meade Plantation
*Waverly
*Carnton Plantation
*Waveland Plantation
*Rippavilla Plantation
*Rattle & Snap Plantation
*Shirley Plantation located on the James River in Charles City County, Virginia. The plantation is said to be the oldest family owned business in North America.
*Tara Plantation (Fictional, From Gone with the Wind)
*The Old Governor's Mansion
*Candon Hearth
*Sweet Briar Plantation located in Sweet Briar, Virginia

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