Masters of the big house
Subtitle: elite slaveholders of the mid-nineteenth-century South
By: William Kauffman Scarborough.
Publisher: Louisiana State University Press
Published: 2003
Place of publication: Baton Rouge
Language: eng
Number of pages: 521
Subjects: Plantation owners -- Southern States -- History -- 19th century; Slaveholders -- Southern States -- History -- 19th century; Elite (Social sciences) -- Southern States -- History -- 19th century; Slavery -- Social aspects -- Southern States -- History -- 19th century; Slavery -- Economic aspects -- Southern States -- History -- 19th century; Slavery -- Political aspects -- Southern States -- History -- 19th century; Plantation life -- Southern States -- History -- 19th century; Southern States -- History -- 1775-1865; Southern States -- Social conditions -- 19th century; Southern States -- Race relations
Description: "In this volume, William Kauffman Scarborough unveils new information about one of the most powerful groups in American history, the 340 wealthiest aristocratic planters who owned 250 or more slaves in the census years of 1850 and 1860. The identification and tabulation in every slaveholding state of these lords of economic, social, and political influence reveals a highly learned class of men who set the tone for southern society and - despite their racism and Yankeephobia - evinced the qualities of honor, generosity, and even grandeur associated with the term "southern gentleman." Scarborough examines in detail the demographics of elite families, the educational philosophy and religiosity of the nabobs, their responses to the sectional crisis of their time, and gender relations in the Big House." "Also recounted are planters' slave management methods, their contributions and sacrifices during the Civil War, and their adjustment to the travails of Reconstruction and a postwar world alien to the one they had dominated."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [485]-501) and index.