Includes bibliographical references (p. [485]-501) and index.
Contents
Social and demographic characteristics -- Religious and cultural characteristics -- Wives, mothers, and daughters : gender relations in the big house -- Agrarian empires : acquisition, production, profits, problems, and management -- Toiling for old "massa" : slave labor on the great plantations -- Capitalists all : investments and capital accumulation outside the agricultural sector -- Political attitudes and influence : the response of the elite to the first sectional crisis -- The road to Armageddon : the role of the planter elite in the secession crisis -- Days of judgment : the demise of a slave society -- Postwar adjustment : the legacy of emancipation and defeat -- Lords and capitalists : the ideology of the master class -- Appendix A. Slaveholders with 500 or more slaves, 1850 -- Appendix B. Slaveholders with 500 or more slaves, 1860 -- Appendix C. Elite slaveholders by state of residence, 1850 -- Appendix D. Elite slaveholders by state of residence, 1860.
