 Wetherington (2005) argues the plain folk (of Georgia) supported secession to defend their families, homes, and notions of white liberty.During the war, the established patriarchy continued to control the home front and kept it functioning, even though growing numbers of plain folk joined the new wartime poor.Wetherington suggests that their localism and racism dovetailed with a republican ideology founded on Jeffersonian notions of an "economically independent yeomanry sharing common interests".