Mr. Jefferson's Lost Cause: Land, Farmers, Slavery, and the Louisiana PurchaseOxford University Press, 6. 3. 2003 - Počet stran: 376 Thomas Jefferson advocated a republic of small farmers--free and independent yeomen. And yet as president he presided over a massive expansion of the slaveholding plantation system, particularly with the Louisiana Purchase, squeezing the yeomanry to the fringes and to less desirable farmland. Now Roger G. Kennedy conducts an eye-opening examination of the gap between Jefferson's stated aspirations and what actually happened. Kennedy reveals how the Louisiana Purchase had a major impact on land use and the growth of slavery. He examines the great financial interests (such as the powerful land companies that speculated in new territories and the British textile interests) that beat down slavery's many opponents in the South itself (Native Americans, African Americans, Appalachian farmers, and conscientious opponents of slavery). He describes how slaveholders' cash crops--first tobacco, then cotton--sickened the soil and how the planters moved from one desolated tract to the next. Soon the dominant culture of the entire region--from Maryland to Florida, from Carolina to Texas--was that of owners and slaves producing staple crops for international markets. The earth itself was impoverished, in many places beyond redemption. None of this, Kennedy argues, was inevitable. He focuses on the character, ideas, and ambitions of Thomas Jefferson to show how he and other Southerners struggled with the moral dilemmas presented by the presence of Indian farmers on land they coveted, by the enslavement of their workforce, by the betrayal of their stated hopes, and by the manifest damage being done to the earth itself. Jefferson emerges as a tragic figure in a tragic period. Mr. Jefferson's Lost Cause was a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2003. |
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Strana viii
... Pitt Jefferson and the Cotton Business • Slaves as Cash Crop The Millers Send Out Their Salesmen • Independence? The British and the Plantocracy 97 PART THREE Resistance to the Plantation System, 115 CHAPTER 9 viii CONTENTS.
... Pitt Jefferson and the Cotton Business • Slaves as Cash Crop The Millers Send Out Their Salesmen • Independence? The British and the Plantocracy 97 PART THREE Resistance to the Plantation System, 115 CHAPTER 9 viii CONTENTS.
Strana 6
... crops. They traveled at a leisurely pace. They had good reasons to be interested not only in the President's plans for Monticello but also in the condition of Virginia's plantation economy. They were planting families, who were ...
... crops. They traveled at a leisurely pace. They had good reasons to be interested not only in the President's plans for Monticello but also in the condition of Virginia's plantation economy. They were planting families, who were ...
Strana 8
... cropping of the rolling red hills . . . brought ruin to the older districts of the Piedmont.” The two counties, Albemarle and Bedford, in which he owned plantations were so thin-soiled, so roughly 8 THE LAND AND M R. JEFFERSON Lessons ...
... cropping of the rolling red hills . . . brought ruin to the older districts of the Piedmont.” The two counties, Albemarle and Bedford, in which he owned plantations were so thin-soiled, so roughly 8 THE LAND AND M R. JEFFERSON Lessons ...
Strana 9
... crops were to be grown, it would fall upon ground from which the shelter of trees had been removed (to some extent) and from which the sod and compost had also been removed (to some extent). Indians, and many yeomen, were tacticians ...
... crops were to be grown, it would fall upon ground from which the shelter of trees had been removed (to some extent) and from which the sod and compost had also been removed (to some extent). Indians, and many yeomen, were tacticians ...
Strana 10
... crops for international markets. Indians did not move unless they had to. They learned over millennia that they could stay put longer if they avoided planting a single crop alone or for many planting seasons. They made a practice of ...
... crops for international markets. Indians did not move unless they had to. They learned over millennia that they could stay put longer if they avoided planting a single crop alone or for many planting seasons. They made a practice of ...
Obsah
1 | |
The Invisible Empire and the Land | 85 |
Resistance to the Plantation System | 115 |
Acknowledgments | 169 |
EPILOGUE | 235 |
APPENDIX | 245 |
Notes | 262 |
Bibliographic Note | 307 |
Bibliography | 312 |
Index | 336 |
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