Salon: Extremism Ends In Civil War They had promised poor white men that they, too, could rise to prosperity, then they had monopolized the land and the resources that made rising possible. Only rich families lived in fine houses, only rich sons got educations. When poor men called for the government to provide free Western land for farming, or for the government to dredge rivers to make it easier to transport goods to market, or even for schools, slave owners recoiled.
