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 2
... later years he was fully informed of the choices being made but interposed no public objection as his edifice of dreams was systematically reduced to rubble. He could not escape full knowledge of the consequences for the land itself of ...
... later years he was fully informed of the choices being made but interposed no public objection as his edifice of dreams was systematically reduced to rubble. He could not escape full knowledge of the consequences for the land itself of ...
Strana 6
... planks not yet nailed in place. Though she was prepared for the house to be a little “unfinished,” Mrs. Thornton later wrote in her diary, “the general gloom” unsettled her. There was, however, consolation: tea 6 THE LAND AND M R.
... planks not yet nailed in place. Though she was prepared for the house to be a little “unfinished,” Mrs. Thornton later wrote in her diary, “the general gloom” unsettled her. There was, however, consolation: tea 6 THE LAND AND M R.
Strana 9
... later, in the Depression years of the twentieth century, they were two of the five counties in Virginia designated as most needy of restoration by the federal government. Meinig was born in those Depression years and described the ...
... later, in the Depression years of the twentieth century, they were two of the five counties in Virginia designated as most needy of restoration by the federal government. Meinig was born in those Depression years and described the ...
Strana 10
... later out of scientific sophistication, but folk wisdom had anticipated science. Eighteenth-century people knew that erosion washed away nutritive soil in suspension and also washed away nutrients in solution. Since the gap between what ...
... later out of scientific sophistication, but folk wisdom had anticipated science. Eighteenth-century people knew that erosion washed away nutritive soil in suspension and also washed away nutrients in solution. Since the gap between what ...
Strana 12
... later in Mississippi. Land was still cheap, and slaves were still ambulatory wasting assets: Slaves were sent out from the headquarters plantation during slack periods of the year to clear land, build cabins, and to make the general ...
... later in Mississippi. Land was still cheap, and slaves were still ambulatory wasting assets: Slaves were sent out from the headquarters plantation during slack periods of the year to clear land, build cabins, and to make the general ...
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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