<P> The later development of cotton and sugar cultivation in the Deep South in the early 18th century led to the establishment of large plantations which had hundreds of slaves . The great majority of Southern farmers owned no slaves or owned fewer than five slaves . Slaves were much more expensive than land . </P> <P> In the "Black Belt" counties of Alabama and Mississippi, the terms "planter" and "farmer" were often synonymous; a "planter" was generally a farmer who owned many slaves . While most Southerners were not slave - owners, and while the majority of slaveholders held ten or fewer slaves, planters were those who held a significant number of slaves, mostly as agricultural labor . Planters are often spoken of as belonging to the planter elite or to the planter aristocracy in the antebellum South . </P> <P> The historians Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman define large planters as those owning over 50 slaves, and medium planters as those owning between 16 and 50 slaves . Historian David Williams, in A People's History of the Civil War: Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom, suggests that the minimum requirement for planter status was twenty negroes, especially since a southern planter could exempt Confederate duty for one white male per twenty slaves owned . In his study of Black Belt counties in Alabama, Jonathan Weiner defines planters by ownership of real property, rather than of slaves . A planter, for Weiner, owned at least $10,000 worth of real estate in 1850 and $32,000 worth in 1860, equivalent to about the top 8 percent of landowners . In his study of southwest Georgia, Lee Formwalt defines planters in terms of size of land holdings rather than in terms of numbers of slaves . Formwalt's planters are in the top 4.5 percent of landowners, translating into real estate worth six thousand dollars or more in 1850, 24,000 dollars or more in 1860, and eleven - thousand dollars or more in 1870 . In his study of Harrison County, Texas, Randolph B. Campbell classifies large planters as owners of 20 slaves, and small planters as owners of between 10 and 19 slaves . In Chicot and Phillips Counties, Arkansas, Carl H. Moneyhon defines large planters as owners of twenty or more slaves, and of six hundred or more acres . </P> <P> Many nostalgic memoirs about plantation life were published in the post-bellum South . For example, James Battle Avirett, who grew up on the Avirett - Stephens Plantation in Onslow County, North Carolina and served as an Episcopal chaplain in the Confederate States Army, published The Old Plantation: How We Lived in Great House and Cabin before the War in 1901 . Such memoirs often included descriptions of Christmas as the epitome of anti-modern order exemplified by the "great house" and extended family . </P>

Where were most of the large southern plantations located