An American planter : Stephen Duncan of antebellum Natchez and New York / Martha Jane Brazy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brazy, Martha Jane, 1965-

Series:

Southern biography series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Duncan, Stephen, 1787-1867.

Duncan, Stephen.

Plantation owners--Mississippi--Natchez--Biography.

Plantation owners.

Slaveholders--Mississippi--Natchez--Biography.

Slaveholders.

Slavery--Mississippi--Natchez--History--19th century.

Slavery.

History.

Natchez (Miss.)--Social conditions--19th century.

Natchez (Miss.).

Natchez (Miss.)--Race relations.

Natchez (Miss.)--Biography.

Mississippi--Natchez.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xiii, 232 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [2006]

Summary:

Extraordinarily wealthy and influential, Stephen Duncan (1787-1867) was a landowner, slaveholder, and financier with a remarkable array of social, economic, and political contacts in pre-Civil War America. In this, the first biography of Duncan, Martha Jane Brazy offers a compelling new portrait of antebellum life through exploration of Duncan's multifaceted personal networks in both the South and the North. Duncan grew up in an elite Pennsylvania family with strong business ties in Philadelphia. There was little indication, though, that he would become a cosmopolitan entrepreneur who would own over fifteen plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana, collectively owning more than two thousand slaves. With style and substance, Martha Jane Brazy describes both the development of Duncan's businesses and the lives of the slaves on whose labor his empire was constructed. According to Brazy, Duncan was a hybrid, not fully a southerner or a northerner. He was also, Brazy shows, a paradox. Although he put down deep roots in Natchez, his sphere of influence was national in scope. Although his wealth was greatly dependent on the slaves he owned, he predicted a clash over the issue of slave ownership nearly three decades before the onset of the Civil War. Perhaps more than any other planter studied, Duncan contradicts historians' definition of the southern slaveholding aristocracy. By connecting and contrasting the networks of this elite planter and those he enslaved, Brazy provides new insights into the slaveocracy of antebellum America.

Contents:

Prologue : "an important crisis is at hand"

"To seek his fortunes in the distant South" : Stephen Duncan's migration from Pennsylvania to the Mississippi territory

Laying the foundations of mastery : land, slaves, capital, and the network of elites

Slaves, politics, and family : Stephen Duncan and the challenges to mastery

"We will one day have our throats cut in this county" : Stephen Duncan and the challenges of slavery

Power and position : redefining economic self in boom and bust times

Public duties and private worlds : the roles and dynamics of the Duncan family

Survival of the fittest : preservation of wealth and family

An empire realized : the concentration of wealth and the negotiation of shifting networks

Underground networks : slave communities and slavery on the Duncan plantations

Epilogue : "we are in the midst of perils".

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 205-221) and index.

ISBN:

0807131415

9780807131411

OCLC:

64390387

Publisher Number:

9780807131411