 The 340 planters who each owned 250 or more slaves in the Natchez region in 1860 were not enthusiastic Confederates.The support these slaveholders had for the Confederacy was problematic because they were fairly recent arrivals to the Confederacy, opposed secession, and held social and economic ties to the Union.These elite planters also lacked a strong emotional attachment to the idea of a Southern nation; however, when the war started, many of their sons and nephews joined the Confederate army.