Author: Jane Turner Censer Publisher: LSU Press ISBN: 9780807116340 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 224
Book Description
Many historians of late have portrayed upper-class southerners of the antebellum period as inordinately aristocratic and autocratic. Some have even seen in the planters’ family relations the faint yet distinct shadow of a master’s dealings with his slaves. Challenging such commonly held assumptions about the attitudes and actions of the pre-Civil War southern elite, Jane Turner Censer draws on an impressive array of primary and secondary sources—including letters, diaries, and other first-person accounts as well as federal census materials and local wills, deeds, and marriage records—to show that southern planters, at least in their relations with their children, were caring, affectionate, and surprisingly egalitarian. Through the close study of more than one hundred North Carolina families, she reveals the adults to have been doting parents who emphasized to their children the importance of education and achievement and the wise use of time and money. The planters guided their offspring toward autonomy by progressively granting them more and more opportunities for decision making. By the time sons and daughters were faced with choosing a marriage partner, parents played only a restrained advisory role. Similarly, fathers left career decisions almost entirely up to their sons. Censer concludes that children almost invariably met their parents’ high expectations. Most of them chose to marry within their class, and the second generation usually maintained or improved their parents’ high economic status. On the other hand, Censer finds that planters rarely developed warm, empathetic relationships with their slaves. Even the traditional “mammy,” whose role is southern planter families was been exalted in much of our literature, seems to have held a relatively minor place in the family structure. Bringing to light a wealth of previously unassimilated information, North Carolina Planters and Their Children points toward a new understanding of social and cultural life among the wealthy in the early nineteenth-century South.
Author: Warren Eugene Milteer Jr. Publisher: LSU Press ISBN: 0807173770 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 312
Book Description
In North Carolina’s Free People of Color, 1715–1885, Warren Eugene Milteer Jr. examines the lives of free persons categorized by their communities as “negroes,” “mulattoes,” “mustees,” “Indians,” “mixed-bloods,” or simply “free people of color.” From the colonial period through Reconstruction, lawmakers passed legislation that curbed the rights and privileges of these non-enslaved residents, from prohibiting their testimony against whites to barring them from the ballot box. While such laws suggest that most white North Carolinians desired to limit the freedoms and civil liberties enjoyed by free people of color, Milteer reveals that the two groups often interacted—praying together, working the same land, and occasionally sharing households and starting families. Some free people of color also rose to prominence in their communities, becoming successful businesspeople and winning the respect of their white neighbors. Milteer’s innovative study moves beyond depictions of the American South as a region controlled by a strict racial hierarchy. He contends that although North Carolinians frequently sorted themselves into races imbued with legal and social entitlements—with whites placing themselves above persons of color—those efforts regularly clashed with their concurrent recognition of class, gender, kinship, and occupational distinctions. Whites often determined the position of free nonwhites by designating them as either valuable or expendable members of society. In early North Carolina, free people of color of certain statuses enjoyed access to institutions unavailable even to some whites. Prior to 1835, for instance, some free men of color possessed the right to vote while the law disenfranchised all women, white and nonwhite included. North Carolina’s Free People of Color, 1715–1885 demonstrates that conceptions of race were complex and fluid, defying easy characterization. Despite the reductive labels often assigned to them by whites, free people of color in the state emerged from an array of backgrounds, lived widely varied lives, and created distinct cultures—all of which, Milteer suggests, allowed them to adjust to and counter ever-evolving forms of racial discrimination.
Author: Rebecca Fraser Publisher: Springer ISBN: 1137291850 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 207
Book Description
Sarah Hicks Williams was the northern-born wife of an antebellum slaveholder. Rebecca Fraser traces her journey as she relocates to Clifton Grove, the Williams' slaveholding plantation, presenting her with complex dilemmas as she reconciled her new role as plantation mistress to the gender script she had been raised with in the North.
Author: William L. Richter Publisher: Scarecrow Press ISBN: 0810879158 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.
Author: Christie Farnham Publisher: NYU Press ISBN: 0814726151 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 275
Book Description
Explores the whole range of social issues surrounding the education of women in the southern US during the first half of the 19th century. Noting that women's colleges and seminaries strove to maintain an academic standard equal to that of men's, while reinforcing the society's construction of femininity, delves into the tension which that disparity created among educators, and the strategies they used to deny it. Draws heavily from diaries, notebooks, and other personal papers. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Author: William Kauffman Scarborough Publisher: LSU Press ISBN: 0807156019 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 670
Book Description
William Kauffman Scarborough has produced a work of incomparable scope and depth, offering the challenge to see afresh one of the most powerful groups in American history -- the wealthiest southern planters who owned 250 or more slaves in the census years of 1850 and 1860. The identification and tabulation in every slaveholding state of these lords of economic, social, and political influence reveals a highly learned class of men who set the tone for southern society while also involving themselves in the wider world of capitalism. Scarborough examines the demographics of elite families, the educational philosophy and religiosity of the nabobs, gender relations in the Big House, slave management methods, responses to secession, and adjustment to the travails of Reconstruction and an alien postwar world.
Author: Alan D. Watson Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 0786485280 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 257
Book Description
This biography is about one of North Carolina's early governors, an advocate for public education in the post-Colonial period. Benjamin Smith (1757-1826) came from a distinguished South Carolina family and acquired enormous wealth in the Cape Fear region as a member of the planter class. Like his elite white peers, Smith was active in public life, in county government and as a legislator in state politics. He promoted public schools, the University of North Carolina, domestic manufacturing, banking, penal reform, and internal improvements. Earning the nickname "General" because of his militia activities, he rose to governorship but ended up dying in poverty.
Author: Elizabeth Fox-Genovese Publisher: UNC Press Books ISBN: 0807864226 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 565
Book Description
Documenting the difficult class relations between women slaveholders and slave women, this study shows how class and race as well as gender shaped women's experiences and determined their identities. Drawing upon massive research in diaries, letters, memoirs, and oral histories, the author argues that the lives of antebellum southern women, enslaved and free, differed fundamentally from those of northern women and that it is not possible to understand antebellum southern women by applying models derived from New England sources.
Author: David Edwin Harrell Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing ISBN: 9780802837189 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 1330
Book Description
"Unto a Good Land offers a distinctive narrative history of the American people -- from the first contacts between Europeans and North America's native inhabitants, through the creation of a modern nation, to the standing of the United States as a world power. Written by a team of distinguished historians led by David Edwin Harrell, Jr. and Edwin S. Gaustad, this textbook shows how grasping the uniqueness of the bAmerican experimentb depends on understanding the role of religion as well as social, cultural, political, and economic factors in shaping U.S. history. A common shortcoming of most United States history textbooks is that while, in recent decades, they have expanded their coverage of social and cultural history, they still tend to shortchange the role of religious ideas, practices, and movements in the American past. "Unto a Good Land addresses this shortcoming in a balanced way. The authors recognize that religion is only one of many factors that have influenced our past -- one, however, that has often been neglected in textbook accounts. This volume gives religion its appropriate place in the story. "Unprecedented coverage of the forces that have shaped the history of the United States While none of America's rich history is left out, this volume is the first U.S. history textbook to give serious attention to the religious dimension of American life. This textbook is not a religious history; instead, it offers an account of American history that includes religious ideas, practices, and movements whenever they played a shaping role. "Comprehensive and current This volume traces the American story from the earliest encounters between the first North Americaninhabitants and Europeans through the 2004 presidential election. Complete and balanced treatment is also given to issues of gender, race, and ethnicity, as well as cultural, political, and economic forces. "A clear and compelling narrative The authors are more than expert historians; they are also talented writers who recognize history to be the retelling of human life. United by a seamless narrative structure, these chapters restore the bstoryb to history. "Multiple formats specially designed for flexible classroom use "Unto a Good Land is available as a single hardcover edition or as two paperback volumes, offering maximum flexibility when adapting curriculum for one- and two-semester courses in U.S. history. The two paperback volumes can be used for U.S. history survey courses divided at 1865 or 1900 -- or at any date in between. "Informative special features to complement the text In addition to the book's exceptional narrative, an array of special features enhances the instructional value of the text and points students to resources for further study. "Includes assistance for teaching and test preparation The instructor's manual for "Unto a Good Land provides helpful suggestions for lesson plans and assignments, and the test bank provides multiple-choice and essay questions for use as study aids, quizzes, or tests. "Suitable for instruction at both secular and religious colleges and universities Drawing on their experience in both secular and religious schools, the authors have ensured that this textbook is suitable for U.S. history classes in a wide variety of settings.
Author: Mark R. Cheathem Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 1442273208 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 560
Book Description
The Jacksonian period under review in this dictionary served as a transition period for the United States. The growing pains of the republic’s infancy, during which time Americans learned that their nation would survive transitions of political power, gave way to the uncertainty of adolescence. While the United States did not win its second war, the War of 1812, with its mother country, it reaffirmed its independence and experienced significant maturation in many areas following the conflict’s end in 1815. As the second generation of leaders took charge in the 1820s, the United States experienced the challenges of adulthood. The height of those adult years, from 1829 to 1849, is the focus of the Historical Dictionary of the Jacksonian Era and Manifest Destiny. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of the Jacksonian Era and Manifest Destiny contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 200 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about this era in American history.
Author: Jane Turner Censer
Author: Warren Eugene Milteer Jr.
Author: Rebecca Fraser
Author: William L. Richter
Author: Christie Farnham
Author: William Kauffman Scarborough
Author: Alan D. Watson
Author: Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
Author: David Edwin Harrell
Author: Mark R. Cheathem