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 ix
... Plantation System, 115 CHAPTER 9 McGillivray • Mixed People and Mixed Motives • Indian Statehood McGillivray's Nationality • McGillivray and Washington 119 CHAPTER 10 Resisters, Assisters, and Lost Causes Scots, Blacks, and Seminoles ...
... Plantation System, 115 CHAPTER 9 McGillivray • Mixed People and Mixed Motives • Indian Statehood McGillivray's Nationality • McGillivray and Washington 119 CHAPTER 10 Resisters, Assisters, and Lost Causes Scots, Blacks, and Seminoles ...
Strana 5
... plantation owner, she was conscious of both house and land. As Jefferson's friend, she knew that when he was at home he was amid circumstances he could manage, unlike the ebullient and contentious nation he sought to lead. The house at ...
... plantation owner, she was conscious of both house and land. As Jefferson's friend, she knew that when he was at home he was amid circumstances he could manage, unlike the ebullient and contentious nation he sought to lead. The house at ...
Strana 6
... plantation headquarters, though the mountain itself was reserved for gardens, buildings, and parklands, not for growing staple crops. They traveled at a leisurely pace. They had good reasons to be interested not only in the President's ...
... plantation headquarters, though the mountain itself was reserved for gardens, buildings, and parklands, not for growing staple crops. They traveled at a leisurely pace. They had good reasons to be interested not only in the President's ...
Strana 10
... plantation system, in what planters regarded as less desirable land. There agriculture was conducted by people ... plantations, who worked slaves to exploit the land rapidly to produce staple crops for international markets. Indians did ...
... plantation system, in what planters regarded as less desirable land. There agriculture was conducted by people ... plantations, who worked slaves to exploit the land rapidly to produce staple crops for international markets. Indians did ...
Strana 11
... plantations, because Indian agriculture was less intrusive and destructive. So was that of white yeomen. One reason why human responses to soil depletion and sickness accelerated in the plantation system is that fire, used as a tool by ...
... plantations, because Indian agriculture was less intrusive and destructive. So was that of white yeomen. One reason why human responses to soil depletion and sickness accelerated in the plantation system is that fire, used as a tool by ...
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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