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Masterless men : poor whites and slavery in the antebellum South /

"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 Sout...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Clasificación:Libro Electrónico
Autor principal: Merritt, Keri Leigh, 1980- (Autor)
Formato: Electrónico eBook
Idioma:Inglés
Publicado: Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Colección:Cambridge studies on the American South.
Temas:
Acceso en línea:Texto completo
Descripción
Sumario:"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"--
Descripción Física:1 online resource
Bibliografía:Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:1316881652
9781316881651
9781316882023
1316882020
1316635430
9781316635438