Short answers, pulled from the story.
There were an estimated 46,200 plantations in the South in 1860. Of these, 20,700 had between 20 and 30 enslaved people, and 2,300 had a workforce of 100 or more enslaved people.
Common crops on Southern plantations included tobacco, upland cotton, sea island cotton, rice, sugarcane, and corn. Cotton was the most common type of plantation in the South before the Civil War, while Louisiana produced nearly all of the sugarcane grown in the United States during the prewar period.
The overseer managed daily operations on the plantation, assigned tasks to enslaved workers, enforced production quotas, and administered punishment, primarily by whipping. Fewer than 30 percent of planters employed white overseers; some appointed trusted enslaved men to overseer-like roles called drivers, and free Black overseers were also used in Louisiana.
Some 91 percent of enslaved people worked in the agricultural sector as of 1860. Enslaved people also performed culinary, domestic, and other forms of labor that sustained the plantation's daily operations.
A 2022 study found that 375 former plantations exist as publicly or privately owned museums across 19 states. The highest concentrations are in southern Virginia, coastal South Carolina, and along the Mississippi River in Louisiana and southern Mississippi.
In the 21st century, some historians have proposed "enslaved labor camp" or "forced labor camp" as alternative terms for plantation complexes. These terms aim to center the role of enslaved workers rather than the agricultural or architectural framing implied by "plantation."