An American Aristocracy
Subtitle: Southern Planters in Antebellum Philadelphia
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: October 15, 2006
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 216
ISBN-13: 9781570036569
Subjects: Social History; Social classes; c 1800 to c 1900; Philadelphia; History: American; United States - State & Local - Middle Atlantic; History; History - U.S; Social life and customs; Pennsylvania; Philadelphia (Pa.); United States - Antebellum Era; United States - 19th Century; 19th century; Interpersonal relations; Social conditions
First sentence: IN HIS Creating an Old South: Middle Florida's Plantation Frontier before the Civil War, Edward Baptist observed, Too often, histories of the nineteenth century South have looked like a cascade of inevitability.
Description: Placing class rather than race or gender at the center of this comparative study of North and South, Kilbride exposes the close connections that united privileged southerners and Philadelphians in the years leading to the Civil War. He finds that the bonds between these similarly educated and socialized groups to be so durable that they resisted sectional warfare. Kilbride notes that southern planters were drawn particularly to Philadelphia because of its proximity to the South and perception of the city as being untainted by northern radicalism. In addition, Philadelphia possessed well-regarded schools, prestigious intellectual societies, historical landmarks, and fashionable shopping districts. In the city's parlors, ballrooms, and classrooms, privileged northerners and southerners forged a republican aristocracy that ignored the Mason-Dixon line.