Synopses & Reviews
In this carefully crafted work, Jeffrey Young illuminates southern slaveholders' strange and tragic path toward a defiantly sectional mentality. Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence and integrating political, religious, economic, and literary sources, he chronicles the growth of a slaveowning culture that cast the southern planter in the role of benevolent Christian stewardeven as slaveholders were brutally exploiting their slaves for maximum fiscal gain.
Domesticating Slavery offers a surprising answer to the long-standing question about slaveholders' relationship with the proliferating capitalistic markets of early-nineteenth-century America. Whereas previous scholars have depicted southern planters either as efficient businessmen who embraced market economics or as paternalists whose ideals placed them at odds with the industrializing capitalist society in the North, Young instead demonstrates how capitalism and paternalism acted together in unexpected ways to shape slaveholders' identity as a ruling elite. Beginning with slaveowners' responses to British imperialism in the colonial period and ending with the sectional crises of the 1830s, he traces the rise of a self-consciously southern master class in the Deep South and the attendant growth of political tensions that would eventually shatter the union.
Review
An important and bracing book with a lot to recommend it.
Journal of the Early Republic
Review
This work displays a depth of research and a breadth of vision seldom found in first books.
American Historical Review
Review
Young's approach is both fresh and broad, and his touch is light.
Journal of American History
Review
This will be an important work in the historiography of proslavery thought.
North Carolina Historical Review
Review
Young•s theoretical model for slaveholder ideology should inspire other local and regional studies.
Choice
Synopsis
Jeffrey Young chronicles the development of a slaveowning culture that managed to cast Southern planters as benevolent Christian stewards, even though slaveowners exploited their slaves for fiscal gain.
Synopsis
An important and bracing book with a lot to recommend it.
Journal of the Early Republic This work displays a depth of research and a breadth of vision seldom found in first books.
American Historical Review Young's approach is both fresh and broad, and his touch is light.
Journal of American History This will be an important work in the historiography of proslavery thought.
North Carolina Historical Review Young•s theoretical model for slaveholder ideology should inspire other local and regional studies.
Choice
About the Author
Jeffrey Robert Young is assistant professor of history at Georgia Southern University.
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Slavery and the Cultural Marketplace in the Colonial Deep South
Chapter 2. An Unhappy Breach: Slaveholder Ideology in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1786
Chapter 3. Building a Nation Safe for Human Bondage: Slaveholders in the Early Republic, 1787-1800
Chapter 4. One in Christ: The Genesis of a Southern Slaveholding Culture, 1800-1815
Chapter 5. A Storm Portending: The Politics of the "Peculiar" Deep South, 1816-1829
Chapter 6. The Tyranny of the Majority: Slaveholder Identity and Democratic Politics in the 1830s
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index