Book

Masterless men : poor whites and slavery in the antebellum South

Merritt, Keri Leigh, 1980- author

Overview

\"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\"-- Provided by publisher.

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Subject: Poor whites Southern States Social conditions 19th century. / Poor whites Southern States Economic conditions 19th century. / Slavery Social aspects Southern States History 19th century. / Slavery Economic aspects Southern States History 19th century. / Labor Southern States History 19th century. / Land tenure Southern States History 19th century. / Social conflict Southern States History 19th century. / HISTORY / United States / 19th Century. / Southern States Social conditions 19th century. / Southern States Economic conditions 19th century. / Southern States Race relations History 19th century.
• ISBN: 9781107184244

Item info:

1 item available

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Holdings :

Call Number	Copies	Material	Location
F220.A1 M37 2017	1	BOOK	GENERAL