Author: Jane Turner Censer
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 9780807116340
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224
Book Description
Many historians of late have portrayed upper-class southerners of the antebellum period as inordinately aristocratic and autocratic. Some have even seen in the planters’ family relations the faint yet distinct shadow of a master’s dealings with his slaves. Challenging such commonly held assumptions about the attitudes and actions of the pre-Civil War southern elite, Jane Turner Censer draws on an impressive array of primary and secondary sources—including letters, diaries, and other first-person accounts as well as federal census materials and local wills, deeds, and marriage records—to show that southern planters, at least in their relations with their children, were caring, affectionate, and surprisingly egalitarian. Through the close study of more than one hundred North Carolina families, she reveals the adults to have been doting parents who emphasized to their children the importance of education and achievement and the wise use of time and money. The planters guided their offspring toward autonomy by progressively granting them more and more opportunities for decision making. By the time sons and daughters were faced with choosing a marriage partner, parents played only a restrained advisory role. Similarly, fathers left career decisions almost entirely up to their sons. Censer concludes that children almost invariably met their parents’ high expectations. Most of them chose to marry within their class, and the second generation usually maintained or improved their parents’ high economic status. On the other hand, Censer finds that planters rarely developed warm, empathetic relationships with their slaves. Even the traditional “mammy,” whose role is southern planter families was been exalted in much of our literature, seems to have held a relatively minor place in the family structure. Bringing to light a wealth of previously unassimilated information, North Carolina Planters and Their Children points toward a new understanding of social and cultural life among the wealthy in the early nineteenth-century South.
North Carolina Planters and Their Children, 1800--1860
Author: Jane Turner Censer
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 9780807116340
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224
Book Description
Many historians of late have portrayed upper-class southerners of the antebellum period as inordinately aristocratic and autocratic. Some have even seen in the planters’ family relations the faint yet distinct shadow of a master’s dealings with his slaves. Challenging such commonly held assumptions about the attitudes and actions of the pre-Civil War southern elite, Jane Turner Censer draws on an impressive array of primary and secondary sources—including letters, diaries, and other first-person accounts as well as federal census materials and local wills, deeds, and marriage records—to show that southern planters, at least in their relations with their children, were caring, affectionate, and surprisingly egalitarian. Through the close study of more than one hundred North Carolina families, she reveals the adults to have been doting parents who emphasized to their children the importance of education and achievement and the wise use of time and money. The planters guided their offspring toward autonomy by progressively granting them more and more opportunities for decision making. By the time sons and daughters were faced with choosing a marriage partner, parents played only a restrained advisory role. Similarly, fathers left career decisions almost entirely up to their sons. Censer concludes that children almost invariably met their parents’ high expectations. Most of them chose to marry within their class, and the second generation usually maintained or improved their parents’ high economic status. On the other hand, Censer finds that planters rarely developed warm, empathetic relationships with their slaves. Even the traditional “mammy,” whose role is southern planter families was been exalted in much of our literature, seems to have held a relatively minor place in the family structure. Bringing to light a wealth of previously unassimilated information, North Carolina Planters and Their Children points toward a new understanding of social and cultural life among the wealthy in the early nineteenth-century South.
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 9780807116340
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224
Book Description
Many historians of late have portrayed upper-class southerners of the antebellum period as inordinately aristocratic and autocratic. Some have even seen in the planters’ family relations the faint yet distinct shadow of a master’s dealings with his slaves. Challenging such commonly held assumptions about the attitudes and actions of the pre-Civil War southern elite, Jane Turner Censer draws on an impressive array of primary and secondary sources—including letters, diaries, and other first-person accounts as well as federal census materials and local wills, deeds, and marriage records—to show that southern planters, at least in their relations with their children, were caring, affectionate, and surprisingly egalitarian. Through the close study of more than one hundred North Carolina families, she reveals the adults to have been doting parents who emphasized to their children the importance of education and achievement and the wise use of time and money. The planters guided their offspring toward autonomy by progressively granting them more and more opportunities for decision making. By the time sons and daughters were faced with choosing a marriage partner, parents played only a restrained advisory role. Similarly, fathers left career decisions almost entirely up to their sons. Censer concludes that children almost invariably met their parents’ high expectations. Most of them chose to marry within their class, and the second generation usually maintained or improved their parents’ high economic status. On the other hand, Censer finds that planters rarely developed warm, empathetic relationships with their slaves. Even the traditional “mammy,” whose role is southern planter families was been exalted in much of our literature, seems to have held a relatively minor place in the family structure. Bringing to light a wealth of previously unassimilated information, North Carolina Planters and Their Children points toward a new understanding of social and cultural life among the wealthy in the early nineteenth-century South.
Women of the American South
Author: Christie Anne Farnham
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814728405
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329
Book Description
Among the most prominent icons of the American south is that of the southern belle, immortalized by such figures as Scarlett O'Hara, Dolly Madison, and Lucy Pickens (whose elegant image graced the Confederate $100 bill). And yet the women of America's south iave always defied pat generalization, no more readily forced into facle categories than women in the country's other regions. Never before has a book of southern history so successfully integrated the experiences of white and non-white women. Among the myriad subjects addressed in the book are black women's suffrage, the economic realities of Choctaw women, female kin and female slaves in planters's wills, the northern myth of the rebel girl, second wave feminism in the South, and southern lesbians. Bringing to light the lives of Cherokee women, Appalachian "coal daughters," and Jewish women in the South, the essays all but one published in this book for the first time, ensure that monolithic representations of southern womanhood are a thing of the past. Filling a crucial gap in southern history and women's history, Women of the American South is a valuable reference and pedagogical aid for a wide range of scholars and students.
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814728405
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 329
Book Description
Among the most prominent icons of the American south is that of the southern belle, immortalized by such figures as Scarlett O'Hara, Dolly Madison, and Lucy Pickens (whose elegant image graced the Confederate $100 bill). And yet the women of America's south iave always defied pat generalization, no more readily forced into facle categories than women in the country's other regions. Never before has a book of southern history so successfully integrated the experiences of white and non-white women. Among the myriad subjects addressed in the book are black women's suffrage, the economic realities of Choctaw women, female kin and female slaves in planters's wills, the northern myth of the rebel girl, second wave feminism in the South, and southern lesbians. Bringing to light the lives of Cherokee women, Appalachian "coal daughters," and Jewish women in the South, the essays all but one published in this book for the first time, ensure that monolithic representations of southern womanhood are a thing of the past. Filling a crucial gap in southern history and women's history, Women of the American South is a valuable reference and pedagogical aid for a wide range of scholars and students.
Joining Places
Author: Anthony E. Kaye
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807831034
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 377
Book Description
A vivid portrait of how slaves transformed plantations into slave neighborhoods is offered in a new interpretation of antebellum slavery that reveals a slave society that comprised an archipelago of many neighborhoods.
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807831034
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 377
Book Description
A vivid portrait of how slaves transformed plantations into slave neighborhoods is offered in a new interpretation of antebellum slavery that reveals a slave society that comprised an archipelago of many neighborhoods.
In Joy and in Sorrow
Author: Carol Bleser
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190207698
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377
Book Description
In Joy and in Sorrow brings together some of the finest historians of the South in a sweeping exploration of the meaning of the family in this troubled region. In their vast canvas of the Victorian South, the authors explore the private lives of Senators, wealthy planters, and the belles of high society, along with the humblest slaves and sharecroppers, both white and black. Stretching from the height of the antebellum South's pride and power through the chaos of the Civil War and Reconstruction to the end of the century, these essays uncover hidden worlds of the Southern family, worlds of love and duty--and of incest, miscegenation, and insanity. Featuring an introduction by C. Vann Woodward, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Mary Chesnut's Civil War, and a foreword by Anne Firor Scott, author of The Southern Lady, this work presents an outstanding array of historians: Eugene Genovese, Catherine Clinton, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Carol Bleser, Drew Faust, James Roark, Michael Johnson, Brenda Stevenson, Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Jacqueline Jones, Peter Bardaglio, and more. They probe the many facets of Southern domestic life, from the impact of the Civil War on a prominent Southern marriage to the struggles of postwar sharecropper families. One author turns the pages of nineteenth century cookbooks, exploring what they tell us about home life, housekeeping, and entertaining without slaves after the Civil War. Other essays portray the relationship between a Victorian father and his devoted son, as well as the private writings of a long-suffering Southern wife. In Joy and in Sorrow offers a fascinating look into the tangled reality of Southern life before, during, and after the Civil War. With this collection of essays, editor Carol Bleser provides a powerful new way of understanding this most self-consciously distinct region. In Joy and in Sorrow will appeal to everyone interested in marriage and the family, the problems of gender and slavery, as well as in the history of the South, old and new.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190207698
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377
Book Description
In Joy and in Sorrow brings together some of the finest historians of the South in a sweeping exploration of the meaning of the family in this troubled region. In their vast canvas of the Victorian South, the authors explore the private lives of Senators, wealthy planters, and the belles of high society, along with the humblest slaves and sharecroppers, both white and black. Stretching from the height of the antebellum South's pride and power through the chaos of the Civil War and Reconstruction to the end of the century, these essays uncover hidden worlds of the Southern family, worlds of love and duty--and of incest, miscegenation, and insanity. Featuring an introduction by C. Vann Woodward, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Mary Chesnut's Civil War, and a foreword by Anne Firor Scott, author of The Southern Lady, this work presents an outstanding array of historians: Eugene Genovese, Catherine Clinton, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Carol Bleser, Drew Faust, James Roark, Michael Johnson, Brenda Stevenson, Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Jacqueline Jones, Peter Bardaglio, and more. They probe the many facets of Southern domestic life, from the impact of the Civil War on a prominent Southern marriage to the struggles of postwar sharecropper families. One author turns the pages of nineteenth century cookbooks, exploring what they tell us about home life, housekeeping, and entertaining without slaves after the Civil War. Other essays portray the relationship between a Victorian father and his devoted son, as well as the private writings of a long-suffering Southern wife. In Joy and in Sorrow offers a fascinating look into the tangled reality of Southern life before, during, and after the Civil War. With this collection of essays, editor Carol Bleser provides a powerful new way of understanding this most self-consciously distinct region. In Joy and in Sorrow will appeal to everyone interested in marriage and the family, the problems of gender and slavery, as well as in the history of the South, old and new.
General Benjamin Smith
Author: Alan D. Watson
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786485280
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257
Book Description
This biography is about one of North Carolina's early governors, an advocate for public education in the post-Colonial period. Benjamin Smith (1757-1826) came from a distinguished South Carolina family and acquired enormous wealth in the Cape Fear region as a member of the planter class. Like his elite white peers, Smith was active in public life, in county government and as a legislator in state politics. He promoted public schools, the University of North Carolina, domestic manufacturing, banking, penal reform, and internal improvements. Earning the nickname "General" because of his militia activities, he rose to governorship but ended up dying in poverty.
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786485280
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257
Book Description
This biography is about one of North Carolina's early governors, an advocate for public education in the post-Colonial period. Benjamin Smith (1757-1826) came from a distinguished South Carolina family and acquired enormous wealth in the Cape Fear region as a member of the planter class. Like his elite white peers, Smith was active in public life, in county government and as a legislator in state politics. He promoted public schools, the University of North Carolina, domestic manufacturing, banking, penal reform, and internal improvements. Earning the nickname "General" because of his militia activities, he rose to governorship but ended up dying in poverty.
A Heritage of Woe
Author: Grace Brown Elmore
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 9780820318547
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
Grace Brown Elmore recorded her experiences and observations as the Confederate Army retreated from Columbia, South Carolina, and as she was "forced to reassess all that she had taken for granted before poverty, uncertainty, and loneliness became her daily companions."--Jacket.
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 9780820318547
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
Grace Brown Elmore recorded her experiences and observations as the Confederate Army retreated from Columbia, South Carolina, and as she was "forced to reassess all that she had taken for granted before poverty, uncertainty, and loneliness became her daily companions."--Jacket.
Children and Youth in a New Nation
Author: James Marten
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814757499
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
This book unearths the experiences of and attitudes about children and youth during the decades following the American Revolution. Beginning with the Revolution itself, the book explores a broad range of topics, from the ways in which American children and youth participated in and learned from the revolt and its aftermaths, to developing notions of "ideal" childhoods as they were imagined by new religious denominations and competing ethnic groups, to the struggle by educators over how the society that came out of the Revolution could best be served by its educational systems. Rooted in the historical literature and primary sources, the book is a key resource in our understanding of origins of modern ideas about children and youth and the conflation of national purpose and ideas related to child development.
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814757499
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
This book unearths the experiences of and attitudes about children and youth during the decades following the American Revolution. Beginning with the Revolution itself, the book explores a broad range of topics, from the ways in which American children and youth participated in and learned from the revolt and its aftermaths, to developing notions of "ideal" childhoods as they were imagined by new religious denominations and competing ethnic groups, to the struggle by educators over how the society that came out of the Revolution could best be served by its educational systems. Rooted in the historical literature and primary sources, the book is a key resource in our understanding of origins of modern ideas about children and youth and the conflation of national purpose and ideas related to child development.
Randall Lee Gibson of Louisiana
Author: Mary Gorton McBride
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807148644
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409
Book Description
Randall Lee Gibson of Louisiana offers the first biography of one of Louisiana's most intriguing nineteenth-century politicians and a founder of Tulane University. Gibson (1832--1892) grew up on his family's sugar plantation in Terrebonne Parish and was educated at Yale University before studying law at the University of Louisiana in New Orleans. He purchased a sugar plantation in Lafourche Parish in 1858 and became heavily involved in the pro-secession faction of the Democratic Party. Elected colonel of the Thirteenth Louisiana Volunteer Regiment at the start of the Civil War, he commanded a brigade in the Battle of Shiloh and fought in all of the subsequent campaigns of the Army of Tennessee, concluding in 1865 with the Battle of Spanish Fort. As Gibson struggled to establish a law practice in postwar New Orleans, he experienced a profound change in his thinking and came to believe that the elimination of slavery was the one good outcome of the South's defeat. Joining Louisiana's Conservative political faction, he advocated for a postwar unification government that included African Americans. Elected to Congress in 1874, Gibson was directly involved in the creation of the Electoral Commission that resulted in the Compromise of 1877 and peacefully solved the disputed 1876 presidential election. He crafted legislation for the Mississippi River Commission in 1879, which eventually resulted in millions of federal dollars for flood control. Gibson was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1880 and became Louisiana's leading "minister of reconciliation" with his northern colleagues and its chief political spokesman during the highly volatile Gilded Age. He deplored the growing gap between the rich and the poor and embraced a reformist agenda that included federal funding for public schools and legislation for levee construction, income taxes, and the direct election of senators. This progressive stance made Gibson one of the last patrician Democrats whose noblesse oblige politics sought common middle ground between the extreme political and social positions of his era. At the request of wealthy New Orleans merchant Paul Tulane, Gibson took charge of Tulane's educational endowment and helped design the university that bears Tulane's name, serving as the founding president of the board of administrators. Highly readable and thoroughly researched, Mary Gorton McBride's absorbing biography illuminates in dramatic fashion the life and times of a unique Louisianan.
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807148644
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409
Book Description
Randall Lee Gibson of Louisiana offers the first biography of one of Louisiana's most intriguing nineteenth-century politicians and a founder of Tulane University. Gibson (1832--1892) grew up on his family's sugar plantation in Terrebonne Parish and was educated at Yale University before studying law at the University of Louisiana in New Orleans. He purchased a sugar plantation in Lafourche Parish in 1858 and became heavily involved in the pro-secession faction of the Democratic Party. Elected colonel of the Thirteenth Louisiana Volunteer Regiment at the start of the Civil War, he commanded a brigade in the Battle of Shiloh and fought in all of the subsequent campaigns of the Army of Tennessee, concluding in 1865 with the Battle of Spanish Fort. As Gibson struggled to establish a law practice in postwar New Orleans, he experienced a profound change in his thinking and came to believe that the elimination of slavery was the one good outcome of the South's defeat. Joining Louisiana's Conservative political faction, he advocated for a postwar unification government that included African Americans. Elected to Congress in 1874, Gibson was directly involved in the creation of the Electoral Commission that resulted in the Compromise of 1877 and peacefully solved the disputed 1876 presidential election. He crafted legislation for the Mississippi River Commission in 1879, which eventually resulted in millions of federal dollars for flood control. Gibson was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1880 and became Louisiana's leading "minister of reconciliation" with his northern colleagues and its chief political spokesman during the highly volatile Gilded Age. He deplored the growing gap between the rich and the poor and embraced a reformist agenda that included federal funding for public schools and legislation for levee construction, income taxes, and the direct election of senators. This progressive stance made Gibson one of the last patrician Democrats whose noblesse oblige politics sought common middle ground between the extreme political and social positions of his era. At the request of wealthy New Orleans merchant Paul Tulane, Gibson took charge of Tulane's educational endowment and helped design the university that bears Tulane's name, serving as the founding president of the board of administrators. Highly readable and thoroughly researched, Mary Gorton McBride's absorbing biography illuminates in dramatic fashion the life and times of a unique Louisianan.
A Traitor and a Scoundrel
Author: Michael Thomas Smith
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
ISBN: 9780874138412
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Book Description
In 1856, Benjamin Hedrick broke with his white North Carolinian peers by taking an antislavery position on the question of the incorporation of the territories. This biography tells the story of how developed that position, the loss of his position as a professor of chemistry and his subsequent exil
Publisher: University of Delaware Press
ISBN: 9780874138412
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Book Description
In 1856, Benjamin Hedrick broke with his white North Carolinian peers by taking an antislavery position on the question of the incorporation of the territories. This biography tells the story of how developed that position, the loss of his position as a professor of chemistry and his subsequent exil
Life with Father
Author: Stephen M. Frank
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801858550
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 270
Book Description
Who was the Victorian patriarch, and what kind of father was he? In this richly documented study, Stephen M. Frank presents the first account of nineteenth-century family life to focus on the role of fathers. Drawing on letters, diaries, memoirs, and other primary sources, Frank explores what fathers thought about their family responsibilities and how men behaved as parents. His findings are often surprising. Beneath the stereotype of the starched Victorian patriarch, he discovers fathers who were playful, demanding, uncertain of their authority, and deeply anxious about their children's prospects in a rapidly changing society—men with strikingly modern attitudes toward parenthood. Focusing on Northern, middle-class families, he also uncovers the social origins of the "family man" ideal and explores how this standard of middle-class propriety found its way into practice. Life with Father looks beyond the well-known nineteenth-century fascination with motherhood to discover a social order that valued a "father's care" no less than a "mother's love" as a basis for stable family relationships. This compelling social history engages readers with the story of how families in the past struggled with economic and social changes that required fathers to reassess themselves as parents and as men.
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801858550
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 270
Book Description
Who was the Victorian patriarch, and what kind of father was he? In this richly documented study, Stephen M. Frank presents the first account of nineteenth-century family life to focus on the role of fathers. Drawing on letters, diaries, memoirs, and other primary sources, Frank explores what fathers thought about their family responsibilities and how men behaved as parents. His findings are often surprising. Beneath the stereotype of the starched Victorian patriarch, he discovers fathers who were playful, demanding, uncertain of their authority, and deeply anxious about their children's prospects in a rapidly changing society—men with strikingly modern attitudes toward parenthood. Focusing on Northern, middle-class families, he also uncovers the social origins of the "family man" ideal and explores how this standard of middle-class propriety found its way into practice. Life with Father looks beyond the well-known nineteenth-century fascination with motherhood to discover a social order that valued a "father's care" no less than a "mother's love" as a basis for stable family relationships. This compelling social history engages readers with the story of how families in the past struggled with economic and social changes that required fathers to reassess themselves as parents and as men.