Masterless men : poor whites and slavery in the antebellum South

Resource Information

The work Masterless men : poor whites and slavery in the antebellum South represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Bates College. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Masterless men : poor whites and slavery in the antebellum South

Title remainder

poor whites and slavery in the antebellum South

Statement of responsibility

Keri Leigh Merritt

Creator

• Merritt, Keri Leigh, 1980-

Author

• Merritt, Keri Leigh, 1980-

Subject

• Land tenure -- Southern States -- History -- 19th century
• Poor white people -- Southern States -- Economic conditions -- 19th century
• Poor white people -- Southern States -- Social conditions -- 19th century
• Slavery -- Economic aspects -- Southern States -- History -- 19th century
• Slavery -- Social aspects -- Southern States -- History -- 19th century
• Social conflict -- Southern States -- History -- 19th century
• Southern States -- Economic conditions -- 19th century
• Southern States -- Race relations | History -- 19th century
• Southern States -- Social conditions -- 19th century
• HISTORY -- United States -- 19th Century
• Labor -- Southern States -- History -- 19th century

Language

eng

Summary

"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"--

Member of

• Cambridge studies on the American South

Assigning source

Provided by publisher

Cataloging source

DLC

Index

index present

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

Series statement

Cambridge studies on the American South