During the frontier period in Arkansas, women were viewed as uncritical and were generally kept indoors. Southern churches often linked the definitions of slavery and marriage in the Bible, thus Southerners viewed an attack on slavery as an attack on families. Historiographers have indicated that men and women understood one another's roles, even though this did not fit with classical Southern republicanism of the day. Churches managed to link slavery and marriage so inextricably that poor yeoman farmers supported slavery as they viewed northern abolitionists were attacking families in addition to the institution of slavery. Pastors were heavily influenced toward this message by planters with a vested interest in the survival of slavery.