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 7
... sent forth their crews of slaves to girdle and fell the trees and to rip away the matting with their plows. The hills were scalped and then sliced. There was not much topsoil to begin with; one planter said his had been “about as thick ...
... sent forth their crews of slaves to girdle and fell the trees and to rip away the matting with their plows. The hills were scalped and then sliced. There was not much topsoil to begin with; one planter said his had been “about as thick ...
Strana 12
... sent out from the headquarters plantation during slack periods of the year to clear land, build cabins, and to make the general preparations necessary for a gradual transfer of farming operations from the 12 THE LAND AND M R. JEFFERSON.
... sent out from the headquarters plantation during slack periods of the year to clear land, build cabins, and to make the general preparations necessary for a gradual transfer of farming operations from the 12 THE LAND AND M R. JEFFERSON.
Strana 45
U této knihy jste dosáhli svého limitního počtu zobrazení..
U této knihy jste dosáhli svého limitního počtu zobrazení..
Strana 74
U této knihy jste dosáhli svého limitního počtu zobrazení..
U této knihy jste dosáhli svého limitního počtu zobrazení..
Strana 79
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U této knihy jste dosáhli svého limitního počtu zobrazení..
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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