Masterless men poor whites and slavery in the antebellum South
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 wa...
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
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Cambridge
Cambridge University Press
2017
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| Series: | Cambridge studies on the American South
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| Online Access: | |
| Collection: | Cambridge Books Online - Collection details see MPG.ReNa |
Table of 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