Jefferson's Freeholders and the Politics of Ownership in the Old Dominion

Jefferson's Freeholders and the Politics of Ownership in the Old Dominion PDF Author: Christopher Michael Curtis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107379350
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
Jefferson's Freeholders and the Politics of Ownership in the Old Dominion explores the historical processes by which Virginia was transformed from a British colony into a Southern slave state. It focuses on changing conceptualizations of ownership and emphasizes the persistent influence of the English common law on Virginia's postcolonial political culture. The book explains how the traditional characteristics of land tenure became subverted by the dynamic contractual relations of a commercial economy and assesses the political consequences of the law reforms that were necessitated by these developments. Nineteenth-century reforms seeking to reconcile the common law with modern commercial practices embraced new democratic expressions about the economic and political power of labor, and thereby encouraged the idea that slavery was an essential element in sustaining republican government in Virginia. By the 1850s, the ownership of human property had replaced the ownership of land as the distinguishing basis for political power, with tragic consequences for the Old Dominion.

Jefferson's Freeholders and the Politics of Ownership in the Old Dominion

Jefferson's Freeholders and the Politics of Ownership in the Old Dominion PDF Author: Christopher Michael Curtis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107379350
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
Jefferson's Freeholders and the Politics of Ownership in the Old Dominion explores the historical processes by which Virginia was transformed from a British colony into a Southern slave state. It focuses on changing conceptualizations of ownership and emphasizes the persistent influence of the English common law on Virginia's postcolonial political culture. The book explains how the traditional characteristics of land tenure became subverted by the dynamic contractual relations of a commercial economy and assesses the political consequences of the law reforms that were necessitated by these developments. Nineteenth-century reforms seeking to reconcile the common law with modern commercial practices embraced new democratic expressions about the economic and political power of labor, and thereby encouraged the idea that slavery was an essential element in sustaining republican government in Virginia. By the 1850s, the ownership of human property had replaced the ownership of land as the distinguishing basis for political power, with tragic consequences for the Old Dominion.

Freedom Seekers

Freedom Seekers PDF Author: Damian Alan Pargas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316843831
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
In this fascinating book, Damian Alan Pargas introduces a new conceptualization of 'spaces of freedom' for fugitive slaves in North America between 1800 and 1860, and answers the questions: How and why did enslaved people flee to – and navigate – different destinations throughout the continent, and to what extent did they succeed in evading recapture and re-enslavement? Taking a continental approach, this study highlights the diversity of slave fight by conceptually dividing the continent into three distinct – and continuously evolving – spaces of freedom. Namely, spaces of informal freedom in the US South, where enslaved people attempted to flee by passing as free blacks; spaces of semi-formal freedom in the US North, where slavery was abolished but the precise status of fugitive slaves was contested; and spaces of formal freedom in Canada and Mexico, where slavery was abolished and runaways were considered legally free and safe from re-enslavement.

Performing Disunion

Performing Disunion PDF Author: Lawrence T. McDonnell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316887006
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 572

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Book Description
This book traces how and why the secession of the South during the American Civil War was accomplished at ground level through the actions of ordinary men. Adopting a micro-historical approach, Lawrence T. McDonnell works to connect small events in new ways - he places one company of the secessionist Minutemen in historical context, exploring the political and cultural dynamics of their choices. Every chapter presents little-known characters whose lives and decisions were crucial to the history of Southern disunion. McDonnell asks readers to consider the past with fresh eyes, analyzing the structure and dynamics of social networks and social movements. He presents the dissolution of the Union through new events, actors, issues, and ideas, illuminating the social contradictions that cast the South's most conservative city as the radical heart of Dixie.

Masters, Slaves, and Exchange

Masters, Slaves, and Exchange PDF Author: Kathleen M. Hilliard
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107046467
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
This book examines the political economy of the master-slave relationship viewed through the lens of consumption and market exchange. What did it mean when human chattel bought commodities, "stole" property, or gave and received gifts? Forgotten exchanges, this study argues, measured the deepest questions of worth and value, shaping an enduring struggle for power between slaves and masters. The slaves' internal economy focused intense paternalist negotiation on a ground where categories of exchange - provision, gift, contraband, and commodity - were in constant flux. At once binding and alienating, these ties endured constant moral stresses and material manipulation by masters and slaves alike, galvanizing conflict and engendering complex new social relations on and off the plantation.

Freedom's Crescent

Freedom's Crescent PDF Author: John C. Rodrigue
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108424090
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 533

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Book Description
A sweeping history of the Lower Mississippi Valley and its central role in abolishing slavery in the American South.

Carolina's Golden Fields

Carolina's Golden Fields PDF Author: Hayden R. Smith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110842340X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
"The basis for this book began twenty years ago when I enrolled in the College of Charleston's summer archaeological field school. After spending the first half of the semester honing our technique by digging five-foot by five-foot units, identifying soil stratigraphy, and collecting artifacts at the Charleston Museum's Stono Plantation, the archaeologists reoriented us students to a new site. For the remainder of the field school we investigated Willtown Bluff on the Edisto River, an early-eighteenth century township surrounded by plantations. My interest in inland rice cultivation grew from our work at the James Stobo site, a 1710 plantation located on the edge of the Willtown township and one mile from the tidal river. For three archaeological seasons between 1997 and 1999, I participated in excavations of the Stobo Plantation house foundation located on a hardwood knoll surrounded by a sea of low-lying Cypress wetlands. During this time, I had a unique opportunity to walk off the dry terra firma and explore miles of inland rice embankments sprawling to the east and to the south of the house site. Major embankments traverse the wetlands on a magnetic north/south and east/west axis, intersected by smaller check banks and drainage canals as far as the eye can see under the dense cypress and hardwood canopy"--

Contesting Slave Masculinity in the American South

Contesting Slave Masculinity in the American South PDF Author: David Stefan Doddington
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108334997
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
Contesting Slave Masculinity in the American South demonstrates the significance of internal divisions, comparison, and conflict in shaping gender and status in slave communities of the American South. David Stefan Doddington seeks to move beyond unilateral discussions of slave masculinity, and instead demonstrates how the repressions of slavery were both personal and political. Rather than automatically support one another against an emasculatory white society, Doddington explores how enslaved people negotiated identities in relation to one another, through comparisons between men and different forms of manhood held up for judgment. An examination of the framework in which enslaved people crafted identities demonstrates the fluidity of gender as a social and cultural phenomenon that defied monolithic models of black masculinity, solidarity, and victimization. Focusing on work, authority, honor, sex, leisure, and violence, this book is a full-length treatment of the idea of 'masculinity' among slave communities of the Old South.

Thomas Jefferson's Ethics and the Politics of Human Progress

Thomas Jefferson's Ethics and the Politics of Human Progress PDF Author: Ari Helo
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107040787
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
This extensive study suggests that, despite being one of the largest slaveholders in Virginia, Jefferson was consistent in his advocacy of human rights.

Dixie Redux

Dixie Redux PDF Author: Raymond Arsenault
Publisher: NewSouth Books
ISBN: 1603062750
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 506

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Book Description
Dixie Redux: Essays in Honor of Sheldon Hackney is a collection of original essays written by some of the nation’s most distinguished historians. Each of the contributors has a personal as well as a professional connection to Sheldon Hackney, a distinguished scholar in his own right who has served as Provost of Princeton University, president of Tulane University and the University of Pennsylvania, and the chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. In a variety of roles–teacher, mentor, colleague, administrator, writer, and friend–Sheldon Hackney has been a source of wisdom, empowerment, and wise counsel during more than four decades of historical and educational achievement. His life, both inside and outside the academy, has focused on issues closely related to civil rights, social justice, and the vagaries of race, class, regional culture, and national identity. Each of the essays in this volume touches upon one or more of these important issues–themes that have animated Sheldon Hackney’s scholarly and professional life.

The Antebellum Origins of the Modern Constitution

The Antebellum Origins of the Modern Constitution PDF Author: Simon J. Gilhooley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108496121
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Locates the origins of the modern sense of a Founder's Constitution in Antebellum debates over slavery in the nation's capital.