The Old South Frontier

The Old South Frontier PDF

Author: Donald P. McNeilly

Publisher: University of Arkansas Press

Published: 2000-01-01

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1557286191

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In this deeply researched and well-written study, Donald P. McNeilly examines how moderately wealthy planters and sons of planters immigrated into the virtually empty lands of Arkansas, seeking their fortune and to establish themselves as the leaders of a new planter aristocracy west of the Mississippi River. These men, sometimes alone, sometimes with family, and usually with slaves, sought the best land possible, cleared it, planted their crops, and erected crude houses and other buildings. Life was difficult for these would-be leaders of society and their families, and especially hard for the slaves who toiled to create fields in which they labored to produce a crop. McNeilly argues that by the time of Arkansas's statehood in 1836, planters and large farmers had secured a hold over their frontier home, and that between 1840 and the Civil War, planters solidified their hold on politics, economics, and society in Arkansas. The author takes a topical approach to the subject, with chapters on migration, slavery, non-planter whites, politics, and the secession crisis of 1860-1861. McNeilly offers a first-rate analysis of the creation of a white, cotton-based society in Arkansas, shedding light not only on the southern frontier, but also on the established Old South before the Civil War.

Creating an Old South

Creating an Old South PDF

Author: Edward E. Baptist

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2003-04-03

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 0807860034

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Set on the antebellum southern frontier, this book uses the history of two counties in Florida's panhandle to tell the story of the migrations, disruptions, and settlements that made the plantation South. Soon after the United States acquired Florida from Spain in 1821, migrants from older southern states began settling the land that became Jackson and Leon Counties. Slaves, torn from family and community, were forced to carve plantations from the woods of Middle Florida, while planters and less wealthy white men battled over the social, political, and economic institutions of their new society. Conflict between white men became full-scale crisis in the 1840s, but when sectional conflict seemed to threaten slavery, the whites of Middle Florida found common ground. In politics and everyday encounters, they enshrined the ideal of white male equality--and black inequality. To mask their painful memories of crisis, the planter elite told themselves that their society had been transplanted from older states without conflict. But this myth of an "Old," changeless South only papered over the struggles that transformed slave society in the course of its expansion. In fact, that myth continues to shroud from our view the plantation frontier, the very engine of conflict that had led to the myth's creation.

The Old South Frontier

The Old South Frontier PDF

Author: Donald P. Mcneilly

Publisher: University of Arkansas Press

Published: 2000-07-01

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1610757041

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In this deeply researched and well-written study, Donald P. McNeilly examines how moderately wealthy planters and sons of planters immigrated into the virtually empty lands of Arkansas, seeking their fortune and to establish themselves as the leaders of a new planter aristocracy west of the Mississippi River. These men, sometimes alone, sometimes with family, and usually with slaves, sought the best land possible, cleared it, planted their crops, and erected crude houses and other buildings. Life was difficult for these would-be leaders of society and their families, and especially hard for the slaves who toiled to create fields in which they labored to produce a crop. McNeilly argues that by the time of Arkansas's statehood in 1836, planters and large farmers had secured a hold over their frontier home, and that between 1840 and the Civil War, planters solidified their hold on politics, economics, and society in Arkansas. The author takes a topical approach to the subject, with chapters on migration, slavery, non-planter whites, politics, and the secession crisis of 1860–1861. McNeilly offers a first-rate analysis of the creation of a white, cotton-based society in Arkansas, shedding light not only on the southern frontier, but also on the established Old South before the Civil War.

Alabama's Frontiers and the Rise of the Old South

Alabama's Frontiers and the Rise of the Old South PDF

Author: Daniel Dupre

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2017-11-30

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 0253031532

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“A well-written, nicely comprehensive, and inclusive social history of Alabama before and immediately after statehood.”—H-AmIndian Alabama endured warfare, slave trading, squatting, and speculating on its path to becoming America’s twenty-second state, and Daniel S. Dupre brings its captivating frontier history to life in Alabama’s Frontiers and the Rise of the Old South. Dupre’s vivid narrative begins when Hernando de Soto first led hundreds of armed Europeans into the region during the fall of 1540. Although this early invasion was defeated, Spain, France, and England would each vie for control over the area’s natural resources, struggling to conquer it with the same intensity and ferocity that the Native Americans showed in defending their homeland. Although early frontiersmen and Native Americans eventually established an uneasy truce, the region spiraled back into war in the nineteenth century, as the newly formed American nation demanded more and more land for settlers. Dupre captures the riveting saga of the forgotten struggles and savagery in Alabama’s—and America’s—frontier days. “An introduction to the interaction of European powers, the United States, and Indian tribes in Alabama and the Southeast.”—Western Historical Quarterly

The First American Frontier

The First American Frontier PDF

Author: Wilma A. Dunaway

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2000-11-09

Total Pages: 468

ISBN-13: 0807861170

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In The First American Frontier, Wilma Dunaway challenges many assumptions about the development of preindustrial Southern Appalachia's society and economy. Drawing on data from 215 counties in nine states from 1700 to 1860, she argues that capitalist exchange and production came to the region much earlier than has been previously thought. Her innovative book is the first regional history of antebellum Southern Appalachia and the first study to apply world-systems theory to the development of the American frontier. Dunaway demonstrates that Europeans established significant trade relations with Native Americans in the southern mountains and thereby incorporated the region into the world economy as early as the seventeenth century. In addition to the much-studied fur trade, she explores various other forces of change, including government policy, absentee speculation in the region's natural resources, the emergence of towns, and the influence of local elites. Contrary to the myth of a homogeneous society composed mainly of subsistence homesteaders, Dunaway finds that many Appalachian landowners generated market surpluses by exploiting a large landless labor force, including slaves. In delineating these complexities of economy and labor in the region, Dunaway provides a perceptive critique of Appalachian exceptionalism and development.

Making Space on the Western Frontier

Making Space on the Western Frontier PDF

Author: W. Paul Reeve

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2010-10-01

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 0252092260

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Until recently, most scholarly work on Chinese music in both Chinese and Western languages has focused on genres, musical structure, and general history and concepts, rather than on the musicians themselves. This volume breaks new ground by focusing on individual musicians active in different amateur and professional music scenes in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Chinese communities in Europe. Using biography to deepen understanding of Chinese music, contributors present contextualized portraits of rural folk singers, urban opera singers, literati, and musicians on both geographic and cultural frontiers. Contributors are Nimrod Baranovitch, Rachel Harris, Frank Kouwenhoven, Tong Soon Lee, Peter Micic, Helen Rees, Antoinet Schimmelpenninck, Shao Binsun, Jonathan P. J. Stock, and Bell Yung.

Carolina Planters on the Alabama Frontier

Carolina Planters on the Alabama Frontier PDF

Author: Edward Pattillo

Publisher: NewSouth Books

Published: 2011-01-01

Total Pages: 514

ISBN-13: 160306138X

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Carolina Planters on the Alabama Frontier: The Spencer-Robeson-McKenzie Family collects the papers of Elihu Spencer, a fourth-generation New Englander, and his family and Southern descendants, to form a history of the American nation from the point of view of planters and those they held in slavery. The documents in this volume are accounts of a privileged world that was afflicted by constant loss and despair. The families lived as isolated, landed gentry in a society where medical treatment had hardly evolved since the Middle Ages. The papers together form a dramatic narrative of early Americans from the mid-eighteenth century to the harsh years after the Civil War. They created their new society with courage and imagination and tenacity, while never recognizing their own moral blind spot regarding the holding of human beings in slavery. It brought about the collapse of their world--poignantly expressed in these letters.

Plain Folk of the Old South

Plain Folk of the Old South PDF

Author: Frank Lawrence Owsley

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2008-02-01

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780807133422

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First published in 1949, Frank Lawrence Owsley’s Plain Folk of the Old South refuted the popular myth that the antebellum South contained only three classes—planters, poor whites, and slaves. Owsley draws on a wide range of source materials—firsthand accounts such as diaries and the published observations of travelers and journalists; church records; and county records, including wills, deeds, tax lists, and grand-jury reports—to accurately reconstruct the prewar South’s large and significant “yeoman farmer” middle class. He follows the history of this group, beginning with their migration from the Atlantic states into the frontier South, charts their property holdings and economic standing, and tells of the rich texture of their lives: the singing schools and corn shuckings, their courtship rituals and revival meetings, barn raisings and logrollings, and contests of marksmanship and horsemanship such as “snuffing the candle,” “driving the nail,” and the “gander pull.” A new introduction by John B. Boles explains why this book remains the starting point today for the study of society in the Old South.