Author: Jonathan Daniel Wells
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807876291
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340
Book Description
With a fresh take on social dynamics in the antebellum South, Jonathan Daniel Wells contests the popular idea that the Old South was a region of essentially two classes (planters and slaves) until after the Civil War. He argues that, in fact, the region had a burgeoning white middle class--including merchants, doctors, and teachers--that had a profound impact on southern culture, the debate over slavery, and the coming of the Civil War. Wells shows that the growth of the periodical press after 1820 helped build a cultural bridge between the North and the South, and the emerging southern middle class seized upon northern middle-class ideas about gender roles and reform, politics, and the virtues of modernization. Even as it sought to emulate northern progress, however, the southern middle class never abandoned its attachment to slavery. By the 1850s, Wells argues, the prospect of industrial slavery in the South threatened northern capital and labor, causing sectional relations to shift from cooperative to competitive. Rather than simply pitting a backward, slave-labor, agrarian South against a progressive, free-labor, industrial North, Wells argues that the Civil War reflected a more complex interplay of economic and cultural values.
The Origins of the Southern Middle Class, 1800-1861
Author: Jonathan Daniel Wells
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807876291
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340
Book Description
With a fresh take on social dynamics in the antebellum South, Jonathan Daniel Wells contests the popular idea that the Old South was a region of essentially two classes (planters and slaves) until after the Civil War. He argues that, in fact, the region had a burgeoning white middle class--including merchants, doctors, and teachers--that had a profound impact on southern culture, the debate over slavery, and the coming of the Civil War. Wells shows that the growth of the periodical press after 1820 helped build a cultural bridge between the North and the South, and the emerging southern middle class seized upon northern middle-class ideas about gender roles and reform, politics, and the virtues of modernization. Even as it sought to emulate northern progress, however, the southern middle class never abandoned its attachment to slavery. By the 1850s, Wells argues, the prospect of industrial slavery in the South threatened northern capital and labor, causing sectional relations to shift from cooperative to competitive. Rather than simply pitting a backward, slave-labor, agrarian South against a progressive, free-labor, industrial North, Wells argues that the Civil War reflected a more complex interplay of economic and cultural values.
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807876291
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340
Book Description
With a fresh take on social dynamics in the antebellum South, Jonathan Daniel Wells contests the popular idea that the Old South was a region of essentially two classes (planters and slaves) until after the Civil War. He argues that, in fact, the region had a burgeoning white middle class--including merchants, doctors, and teachers--that had a profound impact on southern culture, the debate over slavery, and the coming of the Civil War. Wells shows that the growth of the periodical press after 1820 helped build a cultural bridge between the North and the South, and the emerging southern middle class seized upon northern middle-class ideas about gender roles and reform, politics, and the virtues of modernization. Even as it sought to emulate northern progress, however, the southern middle class never abandoned its attachment to slavery. By the 1850s, Wells argues, the prospect of industrial slavery in the South threatened northern capital and labor, causing sectional relations to shift from cooperative to competitive. Rather than simply pitting a backward, slave-labor, agrarian South against a progressive, free-labor, industrial North, Wells argues that the Civil War reflected a more complex interplay of economic and cultural values.
When the War Was Over
Author: Dan T. Carter
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807151157
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302
Book Description
In the months after Appomattox, the South was plunged into a chaos that surpassed even the disorder of the last hard months of the war itself. Peace brought, if anything, an increased level of violence to the region as local authorities of the former Confederacy were stripped of their power and the returning foot soldiers of the defeated army, hungry and without hope, raided the already impoverished countryside for food and clothing. In the wake of the devastation that followed surrender, even some of the most virulent Yankee-haters found themselves relieved as the Union army began to bring a small level of order to the lawless southern terrain. Dan T. Carter's When the War Was Over is a social and political history of the two years following the surrender of the Confederacy -- the co-called period of Presidential Reconstruction when the South, under the watchful gaze of Congress and the Union army, attempted to rebuild its shattered society and economic structure. Working primarily from rich manuscript sources, Carter draws a vivid portrait of the political leaders who emerged after the war, a diverse group of men -- former loyalists as well as a few mildly repentant fire-eaters -- who in some cases genuinely sought to find a place in southern society for the newly emancipated slaves, but who in many other cases merely sought to redesign the boundaries of black servitude. Carter finds that as a group the politicians who emerged in the postwar South failed critically in the test of their leadership. Not only were they unable to construct a realistic program for the region's recovery -- a failure rooted in their stubborn refusal to accept the full consequences of emancipation -- but their actions also served to exacerbate rather than allay the fears and apprehensions of the victorious North. Even so, Carter reveals, these leaders were not the monsters that many scholars have suggested they were, and it is misleading to dismiss them as racists and political incompetents. In important ways, they represented the most constructive, creative, and imaginative response that the white South, overwhelmed with defeat and social chaos, had to offer in 1865 and 1866. Out of their efforts would come the New South movement and, with it, the final downfall of the plantation system and the beginnings of social justice for the freed slaves.
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807151157
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302
Book Description
In the months after Appomattox, the South was plunged into a chaos that surpassed even the disorder of the last hard months of the war itself. Peace brought, if anything, an increased level of violence to the region as local authorities of the former Confederacy were stripped of their power and the returning foot soldiers of the defeated army, hungry and without hope, raided the already impoverished countryside for food and clothing. In the wake of the devastation that followed surrender, even some of the most virulent Yankee-haters found themselves relieved as the Union army began to bring a small level of order to the lawless southern terrain. Dan T. Carter's When the War Was Over is a social and political history of the two years following the surrender of the Confederacy -- the co-called period of Presidential Reconstruction when the South, under the watchful gaze of Congress and the Union army, attempted to rebuild its shattered society and economic structure. Working primarily from rich manuscript sources, Carter draws a vivid portrait of the political leaders who emerged after the war, a diverse group of men -- former loyalists as well as a few mildly repentant fire-eaters -- who in some cases genuinely sought to find a place in southern society for the newly emancipated slaves, but who in many other cases merely sought to redesign the boundaries of black servitude. Carter finds that as a group the politicians who emerged in the postwar South failed critically in the test of their leadership. Not only were they unable to construct a realistic program for the region's recovery -- a failure rooted in their stubborn refusal to accept the full consequences of emancipation -- but their actions also served to exacerbate rather than allay the fears and apprehensions of the victorious North. Even so, Carter reveals, these leaders were not the monsters that many scholars have suggested they were, and it is misleading to dismiss them as racists and political incompetents. In important ways, they represented the most constructive, creative, and imaginative response that the white South, overwhelmed with defeat and social chaos, had to offer in 1865 and 1866. Out of their efforts would come the New South movement and, with it, the final downfall of the plantation system and the beginnings of social justice for the freed slaves.
Contested Truths
Author: Daniel T. Rodgers
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674167117
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 294
Book Description
This is a witty, erudite, and original synthesis, which in spite of its brevity gives density and connectedness to two centuries of American political thought.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674167117
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 294
Book Description
This is a witty, erudite, and original synthesis, which in spite of its brevity gives density and connectedness to two centuries of American political thought.
The Gospel Working Up
Author: Beth Barton Schweiger
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019028322X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
The Gospel Working Up offers a history of three generations of Baptist and Methodist clergymen in nineteenth-century Virginia, and through them of the congregations and communities in which they lived and worked. Schweiger examines the religious experience both before and after the Civil War, showing how Southern Protestantism became an instrument of spiritual, moral, material, and cultural progress.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019028322X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
The Gospel Working Up offers a history of three generations of Baptist and Methodist clergymen in nineteenth-century Virginia, and through them of the congregations and communities in which they lived and worked. Schweiger examines the religious experience both before and after the Civil War, showing how Southern Protestantism became an instrument of spiritual, moral, material, and cultural progress.
The Bishop of the Old South
Author: Glenn Robins
Publisher: Mercer University Press
ISBN: 9780881460384
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
As the owner of more than 200 slaves and a profitable sugar plantation, Bishop Polk commanded a unique platform from which he articulated a vision of the Old South that merged Episcopalian values and traditions with the region's more dominant evangelical religious culture. Polk displayed virtually no interest in his denomination's theological squabbles. Instead, his genius rested in his attempts to cultivate a religious solidarity among white Southerners of all classes and to broaden the social and cultural appeal of Episcopalianism in the South. Polk's mission for the University of the South illustrated his dedication to denominational purity, but it also embodied the fundamental tenets of a religious and culturally based Southern nationalism.
Publisher: Mercer University Press
ISBN: 9780881460384
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 268
Book Description
As the owner of more than 200 slaves and a profitable sugar plantation, Bishop Polk commanded a unique platform from which he articulated a vision of the Old South that merged Episcopalian values and traditions with the region's more dominant evangelical religious culture. Polk displayed virtually no interest in his denomination's theological squabbles. Instead, his genius rested in his attempts to cultivate a religious solidarity among white Southerners of all classes and to broaden the social and cultural appeal of Episcopalianism in the South. Polk's mission for the University of the South illustrated his dedication to denominational purity, but it also embodied the fundamental tenets of a religious and culturally based Southern nationalism.
Southern Cross
Author: Christine Leigh Heyrman
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307829731
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 492
Book Description
In an astonishing history, a work of strikingly original research and interpretation, Heyrman shows how the evangelical Protestants of the late-18th century affronted the Southern Baptist majority of the day, not only by their opposition to slaveholding, war, and class privilege, but also by their espousal of the rights of the poor and their encouragement of women's public involvement in the church.
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307829731
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 492
Book Description
In an astonishing history, a work of strikingly original research and interpretation, Heyrman shows how the evangelical Protestants of the late-18th century affronted the Southern Baptist majority of the day, not only by their opposition to slaveholding, war, and class privilege, but also by their espousal of the rights of the poor and their encouragement of women's public involvement in the church.
The Price of Freedom
Author: T. Stephen Whitman
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813183588
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219
Book Description
A stereotypical image of manumission is that of a benign plantation owner freeing his slaves on his deathbed. But as Stephen Whitman demonstrates, the truth was far more complex, especially in border states where manumission was much more common. Whitman analyzes the economic and social history of Baltimore to show how the vigorous growth of the city required the exploitation of rural slaves. To prevent them from escaping and to spur higher production, owners entered into arrangements with their slaves, promising eventual freedom in return for many years' hard work. The Price of Freedom reveals how blacks played a critical role in freeing themselves from slavery. Yet it was an imperfect victory. Once Baltimore's economic growth began to slow, freed blacks were virtually excluded from craft apprenticeships, and European immigrants supplanted them as a trained labor force.
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813183588
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219
Book Description
A stereotypical image of manumission is that of a benign plantation owner freeing his slaves on his deathbed. But as Stephen Whitman demonstrates, the truth was far more complex, especially in border states where manumission was much more common. Whitman analyzes the economic and social history of Baltimore to show how the vigorous growth of the city required the exploitation of rural slaves. To prevent them from escaping and to spur higher production, owners entered into arrangements with their slaves, promising eventual freedom in return for many years' hard work. The Price of Freedom reveals how blacks played a critical role in freeing themselves from slavery. Yet it was an imperfect victory. Once Baltimore's economic growth began to slow, freed blacks were virtually excluded from craft apprenticeships, and European immigrants supplanted them as a trained labor force.
Region, Race and Cities: Interpreting the Urban South
Author: David R. Goldfield
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 9780807140598
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Book Description
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 9780807140598
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Book Description
A Measure of Success
Author: Michael J. McTighe
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438412681
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 312
Book Description
This book examines the role Protestants played in the formation of the public culture of antebellum Cleveland, a developing commercial city typical of many cities throughout the Midwest. The author analyzes the extent to which, and the way in which, Protestants were able to exercise power in the city, concluding that they achieved a measure of success during the years 1836 to 1860, after which their power began to erode. As a framework for this analysis, he develops a methodology for measuring the success, or influence, of religion in a particular society. By focusing on the public culture, this book encompasses both the formal and informal uses of power and the public, quasi-public, and private activities of Protestants. This allows for a discussion of a broader spectrum of culture-shaping activity than is usually included in studies of religion and society, including an examination of contests within the Protestant community over identity and commitments and attitudes toward economic development, benevolent work, temperance agitation, antislavery campaigns, participation in civic rituals, and the social bases of Protestant influence.
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438412681
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 312
Book Description
This book examines the role Protestants played in the formation of the public culture of antebellum Cleveland, a developing commercial city typical of many cities throughout the Midwest. The author analyzes the extent to which, and the way in which, Protestants were able to exercise power in the city, concluding that they achieved a measure of success during the years 1836 to 1860, after which their power began to erode. As a framework for this analysis, he develops a methodology for measuring the success, or influence, of religion in a particular society. By focusing on the public culture, this book encompasses both the formal and informal uses of power and the public, quasi-public, and private activities of Protestants. This allows for a discussion of a broader spectrum of culture-shaping activity than is usually included in studies of religion and society, including an examination of contests within the Protestant community over identity and commitments and attitudes toward economic development, benevolent work, temperance agitation, antislavery campaigns, participation in civic rituals, and the social bases of Protestant influence.
A Kingdom Not of this World
Author: Preston D. Graham
Publisher: Mercer University Press
ISBN: 9780865547575
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Book Description
Stuart Robinson was a prominent Presbyterian newspaper editor who took upon himself the dangerous task of distinguishing between the spiritual world and within a border state "city of conflict" during the Civil War. Presently, historians tend to depict religion during the American Civil War as domesticated under sectional nationalism -- where theologizing was directed at justifying the war in order to forge either a northern or southern Zion. Graham argues that such one-sided depictions do not sufficiently account for either the existence of a border state phenomenon during the civil war or the kind of theologizing that was being propagated from out of the border states against the domestication of religion to sectional politics. In A Kingdom Not of This World: Stuart Robinson's Struggle to Distinguish the Sacred from the Secular During the Civil War Preston D. Graham, Jr. presents a case study of a rather sizeable movement among border state Presbyterians, with special attention given to their most celebrated and influential leader, the Dr. Rev. Stuart Robinson of Louisville, Kentucky. Given the significance of Robinson's theologizing relative to the American doctrine of the separation of church and state, several primary resources are included in a reader portion of the appendix.
Publisher: Mercer University Press
ISBN: 9780865547575
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332
Book Description
Stuart Robinson was a prominent Presbyterian newspaper editor who took upon himself the dangerous task of distinguishing between the spiritual world and within a border state "city of conflict" during the Civil War. Presently, historians tend to depict religion during the American Civil War as domesticated under sectional nationalism -- where theologizing was directed at justifying the war in order to forge either a northern or southern Zion. Graham argues that such one-sided depictions do not sufficiently account for either the existence of a border state phenomenon during the civil war or the kind of theologizing that was being propagated from out of the border states against the domestication of religion to sectional politics. In A Kingdom Not of This World: Stuart Robinson's Struggle to Distinguish the Sacred from the Secular During the Civil War Preston D. Graham, Jr. presents a case study of a rather sizeable movement among border state Presbyterians, with special attention given to their most celebrated and influential leader, the Dr. Rev. Stuart Robinson of Louisville, Kentucky. Given the significance of Robinson's theologizing relative to the American doctrine of the separation of church and state, several primary resources are included in a reader portion of the appendix.