Masterless Men

Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South

AvKeri Leigh Merritt

Häftad, Engelska, 2017

Del i serien Cambridge Studies on the American South

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Beskrivning

Analyzing land policy, labor, and legal history, Keri Leigh Merritt reveals what happens to excess workers when a capitalist system is predicated on slave labor. With the rising global demand for cotton - and thus, slaves - in the 1840s and 1850s, the need for white laborers in the American South was drastically reduced, creating a large underclass who were unemployed or underemployed. These poor whites could not compete - for jobs or living wages - with profitable slave labor. Though impoverished whites were never subjected to the daily violence and degrading humiliations of racial slavery, they did suffer tangible socio-economic consequences as a result of living in a slave society. Merritt examines how these 'masterless' men and women threatened the existing Southern hierarchy and ultimately helped push Southern slaveholders toward secession and civil war.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2017-12-14
Mått:153 x 230 x 20 mm
Vikt:560 g
Format:Häftad
Språk:Engelska
Serie:Cambridge Studies on the American South
Antal sidor:372
Förlag:Cambridge University Press
ISBN:9781316635438

Utforska kategorier

Amerikas historia inom Historia och arkeologi

Mer om författaren

Keri Leigh Merritt is an independent scholar in Atlanta, Georgia. Merritt's work on poverty and inequality has garnered multiple awards, and she is a co-editor of a volume on American South labor history.

Recensioner i media

'In Masterless Men, Keri Leigh Merritt offers a sweeping analysis of how we should understand the place of poor whites in the larger narrative of the Old South. Her detailed examination of the Deep South's impoverished white class will deepen our understanding about the human and economic costs of America's system of black slavery.' Charles Bolton, University of North Carolina, Greensboro

Innehållsförteckning

Introduction: the second degree of slavery; 1. The Southern origins of the Homestead Act; 2. The demoralization of labor; 3. Masterless (and militant) white workers; 4. Everyday life: material realities; 5. Literacy, education, and disfranchisement; 6. Vagrancy, alcohol, and crime; 7. Poverty and punishment; 8. Race, Republicans, and vigilante violence; 9. Class crisis and the Civil War; Conclusion: a duel emancipation; Appendix: numbers, percentages, and the census.