Masters of the big house : elite slaveholders of the mid-nineteenth-century South / William Kauffman Scarborough.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Scarborough, William Kauffman.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Plantation owners--Southern States--History--19th century.

Plantation owners.

Slaveholders--Southern States--History--19th century.

Slaveholders.

Elite (Social sciences)--Southern States--History--19th century.

Elite (Social sciences).

Slavery--Social aspects--Southern States--History--19th century.

Slavery.

Slavery--Economic aspects--Southern States--History--19th century.

Slavery--Political aspects--Southern States--History--19th century.

Plantation life--Southern States--History--19th century.

Plantation life.

Slavery--Political aspects.

History.

Slavery--Economic aspects.

Slavery--Social aspects.

Southern States.

Southern States--History--1775-1865.

Southern States--Social conditions--19th century.

Social conditions.

Southern States--Race relations.

Race relations.

Physical Description:

xviii, 521 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [2003]

Summary:

In This Eagerly Awaited Volume, William Kauffman Scarborough unveils exciting new information about one of the most powerful groups in American history, the 340 wealthiest aristocratic planters who owned 250 or more slaves in the census years of 1850 and 1860. The identification and tabulation in every slaveholding state of these lords of economic, social, and political influence represents an awesome feat of scholarly excavation, revealing a highly learned class of men who set the tone for southern society and -- despite their racism and Yankeephobia -- evinced the qualities of honor, generosity, and even grandeur associated with the term "southern gentleman." Scarborough examines in fascinating detail the demographics of elite families, the educational philosophy and religiosity of the nabobs, their responses to the sectional crisis of their time, and gender relations in the Big House.

Scarborough finds surprising and controversial evidence regarding the degree to which these grandees, previously pictured as exclusively southern agriculturalists, involved themselves in the wider world of capitalism. Because many of them came from and drew capital from the North, they present a startling contradiction: the richest slaveholders were in fact an odd brand of Yankee capitalist, who tended to oppose disunion until the very last moment and yet had no doubts about the morality of slavery. Also recounted are planters' slave management methods, their contributions and sacrifices during the Civil War, and their adjustment to the travails of Reconstruction and a postwar world alien to the one they had dominated. Scarborough has marshaled hard-won facts from vast archival research to produce a work of incomparable scope and depth, offering a challenge to scholars as well as lay readers to see afresh this remarkable group who profoundly influenced the destiny of a nation.

Contents:

1 Social and Demographic Characteristics 18

2 Religious and Cultural Characteristics 52

3 Wives, Mothers, and Daughters: Gender Relations in the Big House 90

4 Agrarian Empires: Acquisition, Production, Profits, Problems, and Management 122

5 Toiling for Old "Massa": Slave Labor on the Great Plantations 175

6 Capitalists All: Investments and Capital Accumulation Outside the Agricultural Sector 217

7 Political Attitudes and Influence: The Response of the Elite to the First Sectional Crisis 238

8 The Road to Armageddon: The Role of the Planter Elite in the Secession Crisis 275

9 Days of Judgment: The Demise of a Slave Society 316

10 Postwar Adjustment: The Legacy of Emancipation and Defeat 373

11 Lords and Capitalists: The Ideology of the Master Class 406

Appendix A Slaveholders with 500 or More Slaves, 1850 427

Appendix B Slaveholders with 500 or More Slaves, 1860 431

Appendix C Elite Slaveholders by State of Residence, 1850 439

Appendix D Elite Slaveholders by State of Residence, 1860 456.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [485]-501) and index.

ISBN:

0807128821

OCLC:

51984922