antebellum

American  

[an-tee-bel-uhm] / ˈæn tiˈbɛl əm /

adjective

1. before or existing before a war, especially the American Civil War; prewar.

   the antebellum plantations of Georgia.

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antebellum British  

/ ˌæntɪˈbɛləm /

adjective

1. of or during the period before a war, esp the American Civil War

   the antebellum South

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antebellum Cultural  

1. A descriptive term for objects and institutions, especially houses, that originated three or four decades before the Civil War. Antebellum is Latin for “before the war.”

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Etymology

Origin of antebellum

First recorded in 1860–65, antebellum is from Latin ante bellum “before the war”

Example Sentences

He was the namesake of the boxer later known as Muhammad Ali, whose ancestors had been enslaved by the white Cassius’s cousin Henry Clay, the antebellum orator and senator.

From The Wall Street Journal

These developments set the course of the intertwined antebellum economy in the North and South—an enslaved workforce in the South and an industrialized workforce in the North.

From The Wall Street Journal

Experts said leaders from the antebellum South demanded similar enforcement of the law.

From Los Angeles Times

Slaveowner statesmen of the antebellum South, like John C. Calhoun and Alexander Stephens, were plainly terrified of the racial apocalypse they feared might come with abolition, let alone any version of legal equality.

From Salon

Chernow writes that “if Tom Sawyer offered a sunlit view of antebellum Hannibal, in ‘Huck Finn’ Twain delved into the shadows.

From Los Angeles Times