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
... soil, wind, and rain come into our discourse, they are offered to show why some decisions were easier than others, not that any were foreordained. Here in brief are the themes of this work: none of the choices to expand the domain of ...
... soil, wind, and rain come into our discourse, they are offered to show why some decisions were easier than others, not that any were foreordained. Here in brief are the themes of this work: none of the choices to expand the domain of ...
Strana 8
... soil from every acre in its drainage basin.” In 1950, the Shenandoah ranged from 380 feet per second in quiet times to 140,000 in flood; the James, from 600 feet to 97,800. When the water is high they flow as conduits of silt.8 The view ...
... soil from every acre in its drainage basin.” In 1950, the Shenandoah ranged from 380 feet per second in quiet times to 140,000 in flood; the James, from 600 feet to 97,800. When the water is high they flow as conduits of silt.8 The view ...
Strana 9
... soils [, which] was the same as that toward the great forests and the vast flocks and herds of wildlife: they were nature's ... soil beneath less perilously to erosion. Like Indians, many yeomen planted in little hillocks, amid the trees ...
... soils [, which] was the same as that toward the great forests and the vast flocks and herds of wildlife: they were nature's ... soil beneath less perilously to erosion. Like Indians, many yeomen planted in little hillocks, amid the trees ...
Strana 10
... soil in suspension and also washed away nutrients in solution. Since the gap between what they knew and what we think we know now has been filled in stages, for a time that statement could be made without calling to the imagination ...
... soil in suspension and also washed away nutrients in solution. Since the gap between what they knew and what we think we know now has been filled in stages, for a time that statement could be made without calling to the imagination ...
Strana 11
... soil of some nutrients—those that plant consumes most voraciously—and will also stimulate the crowding out of a diversity of organisms by that set which thrives with the dominant plant. Rebalancing will then require adding back lost ...
... soil of some nutrients—those that plant consumes most voraciously—and will also stimulate the crowding out of a diversity of organisms by that set which thrives with the dominant plant. Rebalancing will then require adding back lost ...
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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