This course introduces students to the society, economy, and political culture of the antebellum American South.
Southern society is analyzed from the perspectives of masters, slaves, yeomen, and women.
The course is divided into six, thematic parts. The first, Characterizing the Old South, examines how historians have conceptualized the Old South and assesses whether the region is best described as a premodern or modern society. Examined here are slaveholders and their plantations, the construction of the South's defense of slavery, and an assessment of the meaning of southern honor. This section concludes with a close reading and examination of the diaries of one of the Old South's most enigmatic planter-politicians, James Henry Hammond. It defines the yeomen, examines yeomen and poor whites on the southern frontier, and considers the sometimes violent nature of their world.