Masterless Men Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South [Paperback]

This book examines the lives of the Antebellum South's underprivileged whites in nineteenth-century America.Owning neither land nor slaves, poor whites comprised about a third of the American South's white population in 1860. Focusing on land, labor, and legal history, Masterless Men shows what happens to excess workers in a slave society.Owning neither land nor slaves, poor whites comprised about a third of the American South's white population in 1860. Focusing on land, labor, and legal history, Masterless Men shows what happens to excess workers in a slave society.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.Introduction: the second degree of slavery; 1. The Southern origins of the Homestead Act; 2. The demoralization of labor; 3. Masterless (and militant) white workers; 4. Everyday life: material realities; 5. Literacy, education, and disfranchisement; 6. Vagrancy, alcohol, and crime; 7. Poverty and punishment; 8. Race, Republicans, and vigilante violence; 9. Class crisis and the Civil War; Conclusion: a duel emancipation; Appendix: numbers, percentages, and the census.In Masterless Men, Keri Leigh Merritt offers a sweeping analysis of how we should ul#µ