Many Excellent People

by Escott, Paul D.

• ISBN13: 9780807842287
• ISBN10: 0807842281
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1988-08-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

Many Excellent Peopleexamines the nature of North Carolina's social system, particularly race and class relations, power, and inequality, during the last half of the nineteenth century. Paul Escott portrays North Carolina's major social groups, focusing on the elite, the ordinary white farmers or workers, and the blacks, and analyzes their attitudes, social structure, and power relationships. Quoting frequently from a remarkable array of letters, journals, diaries, and other primary sources, he shows vividly the impact of the Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, Populism, and the rise of the New South industrialism on southern society. Working within the new social history and using detailed analyses of five representative counties, wartime violence, Ku Klux Klan membership, stock-law legislation, and textile mill records, Escott reaches telling conclusions on the interplay of race, class, and politics. Despite fundamental political and economic reforms, Escott argues, North Carolina's social system remained as hierarchical and undemocratic in 1900 as it had been in 1850.

Table of Contents

Many Excellent People	p. i
Preface	p. xv
Acknowledgments	p. xxi
The Idea of A Republic Versus Democracy	p. 3
An Unpopular War and Poverty	p. 32
Internal War	p. 59
Reconstruction: Resistance to White Democracy	p. 85
Reconstruction: the Battle Against Black Freedom	p. 113
Change and Repression, 1868-1878	p. 136
Unstable Dominance in A "New" South	p. 171
Leaders of the New South	p. 196
Workers in the New South	p. 220
Democratic Challenge, Undemocratic Solution	p. 241
Afterword	p. 263
Notes	p. 269
Index	p. 333
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