[Alberta's Child]

"Plantation" is a term that Douglass himself used, perhaps because he grew up on a "farm" that was among 20 or 30 different farms owned by the same man in Maryland at the time.

[iconoclast]

You've got a very good point there. In his autobiography, Frederick Douglass describes how amazed he was at living standards in the North after he escaped from the plantation in the South where he was born and raised. Black laborers in New Bedford, Massachusetts -- who were not fully "free" in any sense of the word -- had a higher standard of living than most plantation owners in Maryland where he lived.

That's where all this started.

Now we're at a point where a man who owned 20 or 30 farms had a standard of living that was below that of a freed Negro in the north.

I have a suggestion for you .... in future, consider the source.