Describe in as much detail as possible the structure of Antebellum Southern Society. Did any particular groups dominate the economic and political structure in the region? How did the reality of the Antebellum South differ from the image created by Southerners after the war?

Society in the antebellum south was based on agriculture. The south produced two-thirds of the world's cotton supply, which was its major agricultural product, and it also grew much sugar, tobacco, and rice. All of these were labor intensive crops that relied on slavery to be profitable.
As a result, ante-bellum society was highly stratified, meaning it had a rigid class system. A handful of white male owners of large plantations dominated the economic and political structures of the region. As abolitionist sentiments grew in the north, the large southern landowners dug their heels in and became increasingly determined to protect the institution of slavery in their region and spread it as far as they could.
Beneath the few people who owned huge plantations and large numbers of slaves lived a much greater number of middle class and poor whites who owned few or no slaves. On the bottom were the slaves themselves, who had no rights or status in society.
This was a system of social and economic organization that was on the way out as industrialism spread and produced far more wealth than agriculture, and as notions of human rights grew across society. Observers who visited the south commented on an oppressive system that kept everyone, included whites, in fear. Slaves feared their masters, and white feared a slave uprising.
After the war, however, a mythology of the happy plantation arose. The antebellum south was pictured as place full of gracious, columned plantations where well-fed, well-cared for slaved lived in harmony with their masters. This was in contrast to the reality that most whites didn't own slaves and that slaves were not well treated on the whole.