antebellum
Prior to fighting
Antebellum means before a war, from Latin for "before the war." In American usage, it almost always refers to the period before the Civil War, evoking the slaveholding South: antebellum mansions, antebellum society.
The word carries connotations of plantation culture, gentility, and the social order that slavery maintained.
Large-scale farming operation
- slaveryOwnership of people
- ConfederateSecessionist state supporter
- secessionFormal withdrawal from union
- Civil WarCountrymen fighting countrymen
Southern · aristocracy · cotton · slaveholder · states' rights · abolition · Confederacy · Old South
Large, stately home
- columnsUpright structural shafts
- porticoColumned covered entryway
- verandaRoofed open-air porch
- pillarsLoad-bearing vertical structures
Tara · estate · balustrade · whitewashed · pediment · grand staircase · wraparound porch · symmetry
Refined social standing
- hospitalityGenerous treatment of guests
- debutanteFormally introduced young woman
- cotillionFormal society dance event
- belleReigning social beauty
chivalry · honor · dueling · landed aristocracy · mint julep · hoop skirt · refinement · calling cards
plantation
Large-scale farming operation
- slaveryOwnership of people
- ConfederateSecessionist state supporter
- secessionFormal withdrawal from union
Civil War · Southern · aristocracy · cotton · slaveholder · states' rights · abolition · Confederacy · Old South · landed gentry
mansion
Large, stately home
pillars · Tara · estate · balustrade · whitewashed · pediment · grand staircase · wraparound porch · symmetry · dormers
gentility
Refined social standing
- hospitalityGenerous treatment of guests
- debutanteFormally introduced young woman
- cotillionFormal society dance event
belle · chivalry · honor · dueling · landed aristocracy · mint julep · hoop skirt · refinement · calling cards · finishing school
- "ante-" wordsanteroom, antechamber, antecedent, antepartum, antemortem
- 1800s AmericaOregon Trail, Trail of Tears, transcontinental railroad, Civil War, Abraham Lincoln
- American Architecturecolonial, Craftsman, bungalow, ranch house, Cape Cod
- US HistoryAmerican Revolution, US history, Civil War, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln
- Deep SouthAlabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi River, Mississippi Delta
- erasera, epoch, age, bronze age, period
antebellumpostbellum
After a war
postwar · post-war · wartime · aftermath · post-conflict
antebellumReconstruction
Post-1865 national reunification period
post-Civil War · Jim Crow era · post-emancipation · Gilded Age · civil rights era
antebellummodern
Of recent times
contemporary · present-day · current · postmodern · 21st-century
- antebellum homePre-Civil War Southern mansion
- antebellum mansionGrand pre-Civil War residence
- antebellum eraTime before the Civil War
- antebellum SouthPre-1861 slave states
- antebellum plantationsPre-Civil War Southern estates
- antebellum societyCulture before the Civil War
rebel, rebellion, belligerent, bellicose, belligerence, bellicosity, belligerency, postbellum