Masterless Men : Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South
| Autor: | Keri Leigh Merritt |
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| Předmět: |
Poor white people--Southern States--Economic conditions--19th century, Land tenure--Southern States--History--19th century, Slavery--Social aspects--Southern States--History--19th century, Slavery--Economic aspects--Southern States--History--19th century, Poor white people--Southern States--Social conditions--19th century, Labor--Southern States--History--19th century, Social conflict--Southern States--History--19th century
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| Popis: | 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. |
| Databáze: | eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) |
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