Origins of Southern Radicalism The South Carolina Upcountry, 1800-1860

by Ford, Lacy K.

• ISBN13: 9780195069617
• ISBN10: 0195069617
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1991-02-28
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

In the sixty years before the American Civil War, the South Carolina Upcountry evolved from an isolated subsistence region that served as a stronghold of Jeffersonian Republicanism into a mature cotton-producing region with a burgeoning commercial sector that served as a hotbed of Southern radicalism. This groundbreaking study examines this startling evolution, tracing the growth, logic, and strategy of pro-slavery radicalism and the circumstances and values of white society and politics to analyze why the white majority of the Old South ultimately supported the secession movement that led to bloody civil war.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations	xvi
Part One: Economy and Society	1	(96)
Cotton and Evangelical Christianity	5	(39)
Planters and Plain Folk	44	(53)
Part Two: Politics and Power	97	(118)
``To Die like Freemen Rather than Live like Slaves'': The Problem of South Carolina Reconsidered	99	(46)
``Stand Now on My Own Bottom'': Politics and Party in South Carolina in the Post-Nullification Era	145	(38)
Secession Avoided: The Upcountry during the First Secession Crisis	183	(32)
Part Three: The Boom	215	(64)
Transportation and Commerce	219	(25)
Agriculture and Industry	244	(35)
Part Four: The Crisis	279	(96)
``The Beautiful Harmony in the Body Politic'': The Concurrent Majority and the Controversy over Who Shall Rule at Home	281	(27)
``Resist ... King or Capital'': The Economic Tensions of the 1850s	308	(30)
``A Desperate Remedy'': Politics, Ideology, and Secession	338	(37)
Appendix: Statistical Methods and Samples	375	(4)
Select Bibliography	379	(26)
Index	405