Masterless Men - Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South

This book examines the lives of the Antebellum South's underprivileged whites in nineteenth-century America.

List 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.

About the author

Keri Leigh Merritt is an independent scholar in Atlanta, Georgia. Merritt's work on poverty and inequality has garnered multiple awards, and she is a co-editor of a volume on American South labor history.

Summary

Owning neither land nor slaves, poor whites comprised about a third of the American South's white population in 1860. Focusing on land, labor, and legal history, Masterless Men shows what happens to excess workers in a slave society.

Product details

• Authors: Keri Leigh Merritt
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.05.2017
• EAN: 9781107184244
• ISBN: 978-1-107-18424-4
• No. of pages: 370
• Series: Cambridge Studies on the American South; Cambridge Studies on the Ameri; Cambridge Studies on the American South
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; Social sciences, law, business > Business > General, dictionaries; South America, History, Social & cultural history, HISTORY / United States / 19th Century, Economic history, History of the Americas