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
... Thousand-Foot Line 43 CHAPTER 5 Powers of the Earth Land Companies, Trading Companies, and Triassic Capitalism The Great Land Companies and Revolution Jefferson and Western Speculation • Veterans' Benefits Armed Occupation • Armed ...
... Thousand-Foot Line 43 CHAPTER 5 Powers of the Earth Land Companies, Trading Companies, and Triassic Capitalism The Great Land Companies and Revolution Jefferson and Western Speculation • Veterans' Benefits Armed Occupation • Armed ...
Strana 8
... thousand), carrying “a total of over 400 pounds of 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 ...
... thousand), carrying “a total of over 400 pounds of 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 ...
Strana 9
... thousand years later seemed to be “fresh ground.” They knew how to sustain its yields without dismantling villages and moving along at anything approaching a tenth of the rate common among the planters of the nineteenth century. They ...
... thousand years later seemed to be “fresh ground.” They knew how to sustain its yields without dismantling villages and moving along at anything approaching a tenth of the rate common among the planters of the nineteenth century. They ...
Strana 13
... thousand times more than tenant farmers would have done.”18 As we go along, we will come to other reasons that explain why yeomen were kinder to the land than planters. We will also observe Jefferson's deepening silence on the matter ...
... thousand times more than tenant farmers would have done.”18 As we go along, we will come to other reasons that explain why yeomen were kinder to the land than planters. We will also observe Jefferson's deepening silence on the matter ...
Strana 21
... thousand of whom were Indians. The evidence of local records in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi indicates that the average planter family moved at least twice in a generation, each time setting a few flowers at the doorstep, each time ...
... thousand of whom were Indians. The evidence of local records in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi indicates that the average planter family moved at least twice in a generation, each time setting a few flowers at the doorstep, each time ...
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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