Author: Steven M. StowePublisher: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344
Book Description
Intimacy and Power in the Old South
Author: Steven M. StowePublisher: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344
Book Description
Scandal at Bizarre
Author: Cynthia A. KiernerPublisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813926162
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
In the early 1790s Richard Randolph was accused of fathering a child by his sister-in-law, Nancy, and murdering the baby shortly after its birth. Rumors about the incident, which occurred during a visit to the plantation of close family friends, spread like wildfire. Randolph found himself on trial for the crime largely because of the public outrage fueled by these rumors. The rest of the household suffered too, and only Nancy, who later married the esteemed New York statesman Gouverneur Morris, would find any degree of happiness. A tale of family passion, betrayal, and deception, Scandal at Bizarre is a fascinating historical portrait of the social and political realities of a world long vanished.
Intimacy and Power in the Old South
Author: Steven StowePublisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 9780801841132
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Book Description
Stowe examines three types of rituals central to the elite planter culture ofthe pre-Civil war south as played out by three families.
Historical Dictionary of the Old South
Author: William Lee RichterPublisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 081087914X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 592
Book Description
The South played a prominent role in early American history, and its position was certainly strong and proud except for the "peculiar institution" of slavery. Thus, it drew away from the rest of an expanding nation, and in 1861 declared secession and developed a Confederacy... that ultimately lost the war. Indeed, for some time it was occupied. Thus, the South has a very mixed legacy, with good and bad aspects, and sometimes the two of them mixed. Which only enhances the need for a careful and balanced approach. This can be found in the Historical Dictionary of the Old South, which first traces its history from colonial times to the end of the Civil War in a substantial chronology. Particularly interesting is the introduction, which analyzes the rise and the fall, the good and the bad, as well as the middling and indifferent, over nigh on two centuries. The details are filled in very amply in over 600 dictionary entries on the politics, economy, society and culture of the Old South. An ample bibliography directs students and researchers toward other sources of information.
The Sugar Masters
Author: Richard FollettPublisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807132470
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
Focusing on the master-slave relationship in Louisiana's antebellum sugarcane country, The Sugar Masters explores how a modern, capitalist mind-set among planters meshed with old-style paternalistic attitudes to create one of the South's most insidiously oppressive labor systems. As author Richard Follett vividly demonstrates, the agricultural paradise of Louisiana's thriving sugarcane fields came at an unconscionable cost to slaves. Thanks to technological and business innovations, sugar planters stood as models of capitalist entrepreneurship by midcentury. But above all, labor management was the secret to their impressive success. Follett explains how in exchange for increased productivity and efficiency they offered their slaves a range of incentives, such as greater autonomy, improved accommodations, and even financial remuneration. These material gains, however, were only short term. According to Follett, many of Louisiana's sugar elite presented their incentives with a "facade of paternal reciprocity" that seemingly bound the slaves' interests to the apparent goodwill of the masters, but in fact, the owners sought to control every aspect of the slaves's lives, from reproduction to discretionary income. Slaves responded to this display of paternalism by trying to enhance their rights under bondage, but the constant bargaining process invariably led to compromises on their part, and the grueling production pace never relented. The only respite from their masters' demands lay in fashioning their own society, including outlets for religion, leisure, and trade. Until recently, scholars have viewed planters as either paternalistic lords who eschewed marketplace values or as entrepreneurs driven to business success. Follett offers a new view of the sugar masters as embracing both the capitalist market and a social ideology based on hierarchy, honor, and paternalism. His stunning synthesis of empirical research, demographics study, and social and cultural history sets a new standard for this subject.
Creating an Old South
Author: Edward E. BaptistPublisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 9780807853535
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 412
Book Description
Baptist examines the development of a plantation society in antebellum middle Florida and its effects on codes of masculinity among white settlers and planters, African American family structures and culture, and the formation of a sectional identity in the South.
The Old South's Modern Worlds
Author: L. Diane BarnesPublisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195384016
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348
Book Description
The Old South has traditionally been portrayed as an insular and backward-looking society. The Old South's Modern Worlds looks beyond this myth to identify some of the many ways that antebellum southerners were enmeshed in the modernizing trends of their time. The essays gathered in this volume not only tell unexpected narratives of the Old South, they also explore the compatibility of slavery-the defining feature of antebellum southern life-with cultural and material markers of modernity such as moral reform, cities, and industry. Considered as proponents of American manifest destiny, for example, antebellum southern politicians look more like nationalists and less like separatists. Though situated within distinct communities, Southerners'-white, black, and red-participated in and responded to movements global in scope and transformative in effect. The turmoil that changes in Asian and European agriculture wrought among southern staple producers shows the interconnections between seemingly isolated southern farms and markets in distant lands. Deprovincializing the antebellum South, The Old South's Modern Worlds illuminates a diverse region both shaped by and contributing to the complex transformations of the nineteenth-century world.
Scarlett's Sisters
Author: Anya JabourPublisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807887641
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385
Book Description
Scarlett's Sisters explores the meaning of nineteenth-century southern womanhood from the vantage point of the celebrated fictional character's flesh-and-blood counterparts: young, elite, white women. Anya Jabour demonstrates that southern girls and young women faced a major turning point when the Civil War forced them to assume new roles and responsibilities as independent women. Examining the lives of more than 300 girls and women between ages fifteen and twenty-five, Jabour traces the socialization of southern white ladies from early adolescence through young adulthood. Amidst the upheaval of the Civil War, Jabour shows, elite young women, once reluctant to challenge white supremacy and male dominance, became more rebellious. They adopted the ideology of Confederate independence in shaping a new model of southern womanhood that eschewed dependence on slave labor and male guidance. By tracing the lives of young white women in a society in flux, Jabour reveals how the South's old social order was maintained and a new one created as southern girls and young women learned, questioned, and ultimately changed what it meant to be a southern lady.
Becoming Bourgeois
Author: Frank ByrnePublisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813171458
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 309
Book Description
Becoming Bourgeois is the first study to focus on what historians have come to call the “middling sort,” the group falling between the mass of yeoman farmers and the planter class that dominated the political economy of the antebellum South. Historian Frank J. Byrne investigates the experiences of urban merchants, village storekeepers, small-scale manufacturers, and their families, as well as the contributions made by this merchant class to the South’s economy, culture, and politics in the decades before, and the years of, the Civil War. These merchant families embraced the South but were not of the South. At a time when Southerners rarely traveled far from their homes, merchants annually ventured forth on buying junkets to northern cities. Whereas the majority of Southerners enjoyed only limited formal instruction, merchant families often achieved a level of education rivaled only by the upper class—planters. The southern merchant community also promoted the kind of aggressive business practices that New South proponents would claim as their own in the Reconstruction era and beyond. Along with discussion of these modern approaches to liberal capitalism, Byrne also reveals the peculiar strains of conservative thought that permeated the culture of southern merchants. While maintaining close commercial ties to the North, southern merchants embraced the religious and racial mores of the South. Though they did not rely directly upon slavery for their success, antebellum merchants functioned well within the slave-labor system. When the Civil War erupted, southern merchants simultaneously joined Confederate ranks and prepared to capitalize on the war’s business opportunities, regardless of the outcome of the conflict. Throughout Becoming Bourgeois, Byrne highlights the tension between these competing elements of southern merchant culture. By exploring the values and pursuits of this emerging class, Byrne not only offers new insight into southern history but also deepens our understanding of the mutable ties between regional identity and the marketplace in nineteenth-century America.
Double Character
Author: Ariela J. GrossPublisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400823846
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 275
Book Description
In a groundbreaking study of the day-to-day law and culture of slavery, Ariela Gross investigates the local courtrooms of the Deep South where ordinary people settled their disputes over slaves. Buyers sued sellers for breach of warranty when they considered slaves to be physically or morally defective; owners sued supervisors who whipped or neglected slaves under their care. Double Character seeks to explain how communities dealt with an important dilemma raised by these trials: how could slaves who acted as moral agents be treated as commodities? Because these cases made the character of slaves a central legal question, slaves' moral agency intruded into the courtroom, often challenging the character of slaveholders who saw themselves as honorable masters. Gross looks at the stories about white and black character that witnesses and litigants put forth in court. She not only reveals the role of law in constructing "race" but also offers a portrait of the culture of slavery, one that addresses historical debates about law, honor, and commerce in the American South. Gross maintains that witnesses and litigants drew on narratives available in the culture at large to explain the nature and origins of slaves' character, such as why slaves became runaways. But the legal process also shaped their expressions of racial ideology by favoring certain explanations over others. Double Character brings to life the law as a dramatic ritual in people's daily lives, looking at trials from the perspective of litigants, lawyers, doctors, and the slaves themselves. The author's approach combines the methods of cultural anthropology, quantitative social history, and critical race theory.