The Old South Frontier

by McNeilly, Donald P.

• ISBN13: 9781557286192
• ISBN10: 1557286191
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-10-01
• Publisher: UCP

Summary

In this deeply researched and well-written study, Donald P. McNeilly examines how moderately wealthy planters and sons of planters immigrated into the virtually empty lands of Arkansas seeking their fortune and to establish themselves as the leaders of a new planter aristocracy west of the Mississippi River. These men, sometimes alone, sometimes with family, and usually with slaves, sought the best land possible, cleared it, planted their crops, and erected crude houses and other buildings. Life was difficult for these would-be leaders of society and their families, and especially hard for the slaves who toiled to create fields in which they labored to produce a crop.

McNeilly argues that by the time of Arkansas statehood in 1836, planters and large farmers had secured a hold over their frontier home and that between 1840 and the Civil War, planters solidified their hold on politics, economics, and society in Arkansas. The author takes a topical approach to the subject, with chapters on migration, slavery, non-planter whites, politics, and the secession crisi

Author Biography

Donald P. McNeilly is currently an instructor in the University Honors Program (English) at the University of Maryland.

Table of Contents

List of Tables	x
List of Figures	xi
Prologue	1	(10)
The Arkansas Wilderness	11	(22)
To Arkansas	33	(20)
Making the Planter Class	53	(40)
Yeoman Farmers in a Planters' Society	93	(30)
Slavery on the Cotton Frontier	123	(34)
Politics and Class in Antebellum Arkansas	157	(24)
Epilogue. Brothers in Arms	181	(12)
Notes	193	(54)
Bibliography	247	(18)
Index	265