plantation belt and upcountry in Civil War-era Tennessee /
First Statement of Responsibility
Robert Tracy McKenzie.
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
Place of Publication, Distribution, etc.
New York :
Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.
Cambridge University Press,
Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.
1994.
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item
x, 213 pages :
Other Physical Details
illustrations ;
Dimensions
24 cm
GENERAL NOTES
Text of Note
Based on the author's thesis (doctoral--Vanderbilt University).
INTERNAL BIBLIOGRAPHIES/INDEXES NOTE
Text of Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
(CREDITS NOTE (PROJECTED AND VIDEO MATERIAL AND SOUND RECORDINGS
Text of Note
Based on the author's thesis (doctoral -- Vanderbilt University).
CONTENTS NOTE
Text of Note
"The Most Honorable Besness in the Country": Farm Operations at the Close of the Antebellum Era -- "Honest Industry and Good Recompense": Wealth Distribution and Economic Mobility on the Eve of the Civil War -- "God Only Knows What Will Result from This War": Wealth Patterns among White Farmers, 1860-1880 -- "Change and Uncertainty May Be Anticipated": Freedmen and the Reorganization of Tennessee Agriculture -- Agricultural Change to 1880 -- One South or Many? Implications for the Nineteenth-century South -- Statistical Method and Sampling Technique -- Estimates of the Food Supply and the Extent of Self-sufficiency on Tennessee Farms -- Wholesale Price Data for Agricultural Commodities, 1859-1879.
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SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
This book is a statewide study of Tennessee's agricultural population between 1850 and 1880. Relying upon samples of census data as well as plantation accounts, Freedmen's Bureau Records, and the Tennessee Civil War Veterans Questionnaires, the author provides the first systematic comparison of the socioeconomic bases of plantation and nonplantation areas both before and immediately after the Civil War. Although the study applauds scholars' growing appreciation of southern diversity during the nineteenth century, it argues that recent scholarship both oversimplifies distinctions between Black Belt and Upcountry and exaggerates the socioeconomic heterogeneity of the South as a whole. It also challenges several largely unsubstantiated assumptions concerning the postbellum reorganization of southern agriculture, particularly those regarding the impoverishment of southern whites and the immobilization and economic repression of southern freedmen.