Masterless Men

Erscheinungsjahr 2017
ISBN: 978-1-316-63543-8
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 371 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 538 g

Reihe: Cambridge Studies on the American 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 was drastically reduced, creating a large underclass who were unemployed or underemployed. These poor whites could not compete - for jobs or living wages - with profitable slave labor. Though impoverished whites were never subjected to the daily violence and degrading humiliations of racial slavery, they did suffer tangible socio-economic consequences as a result of living in a slave society. Merritt examines how these 'masterless' men and women threatened the existing Southern hierarchy and ultimately helped push Southern slaveholders toward secession and civil war.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Merritt, Keri Leigh

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein Geschichte der VWL
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wirtschaftsgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

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.

Über Autor(innen)

Merritt, Keri Leigh
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.