2 records matched your query       

Author:

Merritt, Keri Leigh, 1980- author.

Title:

Masterless men : poor Whites and slavery in the antebellum South / Keri Leigh Merritt.

Publisher:

Cambridge University Press,

Copyright Date:

2017

Description:

x, 361 pages ; 24 cm.

Subject:

Poor whites--Southern States--Social conditions--19th century.
Poor whites--Southern States--Economic conditions--19th century.
Slavery--History--Southern States--History--19th century.
Slavery--History--Southern States--History--19th century.
Labor--Southern States--History--19th century.
Land tenure--Southern States--History--19th century.
Social conflict--Southern States--History--19th century.
Southern States--Social conditions--19th century.
Southern States--Economic conditions--19th century.
Southern States--History--History--19th century.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents:

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.

Summary:

"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"-- Provided by publisher.

Series:

Cambridge studies on the American South

ISBN:

110718424X
9781107184244

OCLC:

(OCoLC)980599951

LCCN:

2017003313

Locations:

USUX851 -- Iowa State University - Parks Library (Ames)