The Ruling Race A History of American Slaveholders

by Oakes, James

• ISBN13: 9780393317053
• ISBN10: 0393317056
• Edition: 00
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-01-17
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

This pathbreaking social history of the slaveholding South marks a turn in our understanding of antebellum America and the coming of the Civil War. Oakes's bracing analysis breaks the myth that slaveholders were a paternalistic aristocracy dedicated to the values of honor, race, and section. Instead they emerge as having much in common with their entrepreneurial counterparts in the North: they were committed to free-market commercialism and political democracy for white males. The Civil War was not an inevitable conflict between civilizations on different paths but the crack-up of a single system, the result of people and events.

Table of Contents

Introduction to the Norton paperback edition	ix	(6)
Introduction	xv
PART I: THE COLONIAL LEGACY	1	(34)
1. Revolutionary Slaveholders	3	(32)
PART II: THE MARKET CULTURE	35	(116)
2. Master-class Pluralism	37	(32)
3. The Slaveholders' Pilgrimage	69	(27)
4. The Convenient Sin	96	(27)
5. Freedom and Bondage	123	(28)
PART III: PLANTATIONS, PLEBEIANS, AND PATRICIANS	151	(74)
6. Factories in the Fields	153	(39)
7. Masters of Tradition	192	(33)
Epilogue: The Slaveholders' Revolution	225	(18)
APPENDIX, NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY	243	(54)
Appendix: Sample of Slaveholders from the 1850 Census	245	(6)
Abbreviations Used in Notes and Bibliography	251	(2)
Notes	253	(34)
Bibliography	287	(10)
Index	297