Money over mastery, family over freedom, slavery in the antebellum upper South, Calvin Schermerhorn
Type
Label
Money over mastery, family over freedom, slavery in the antebellum upper South, Calvin Schermerhorn
Language
eng
Index
no index present
Literary Form
non fiction
Main title
Money over mastery, family over freedom
Medium
electronic resource
Nature of contents
dictionaries
Responsibility statement
Calvin Schermerhorn
Series statement
Studies in early American economy and society from the Library Company of Philadelphia
Sub title
slavery in the antebellum upper South
Summary
"Elegantly argued . . . convincingly shows the centrality of enslaved men and women to the transformation of the coastal upper South's commercial life." -TheJournal of Southern History Once a sleepy plantation society, the region from the Chesapeake Bay to coastal North Carolina modernized and diversified its economy in the years before the Civil War. Central to this industrializing process was slave labor. Money over Mastery, Family over Freedom tells the story of how slaves seized opportunities in these conditions to protect their family members from the auction block. Calvin Schermerhorn argues that the African American family provided the key to economic growth in the antebellum Chesapeake. To maximize profits in the burgeoning regional industries, slaveholders needed to employ or hire out a healthy supply of strong slaves, which tended to scatter family members. From each generation, they also selected the young, fit, and fertile for sale or removal to the cotton South. Conscious of this pattern, the enslaved were sometimes able to negotiate mutually beneficial labor terms-to save their families despite that new economy. Money over Mastery, Family over Freedom proposes a new way of understanding the role of American slaves in the antebellum marketplace. Rather than work against it, as one might suppose, enslaved people engaged with the market somewhat as did free Americans. Slaves focused their energy and attention, however, not on making money, as slaveholders increasingly did, but on keeping their kin out of the human coffles of the slave trade. "Displays exhaustive research, a well-crafted argument, and is a valuable addition to antebellum slave historiography." -H-CivWar, H-Net Reviews
Target audience
adult
Classification
Contributor
Creator
Subject
- Slavery -- Chesapeake Bay Region (Md. and Va.) -- History -- 19th century
- African American families -- Chesapeake Bay Region (Md. and Va.) -- History -- 19th century
- Electronic books
- Slaves + Family relationships -- Chesapeake Bay Region (Md. and Va.) -- History -- 19th century
- Slavery + Economic aspects -- Chesapeake Bay Region (Md. and Va.) -- History -- 19th century
- Slave trade -- Southern States -- History -- 19th century
- Slave trade -- Chesapeake Bay Region (Md. and Va.) -- History -- 19th century
- Plantation life -- Chesapeake Bay Region (Md. and Va.) -- History -- 19th century
Content
Incoming Resources
- Has instance1
Outgoing Resources
- Classification1
- Contributor1
- Creator1
- Subject8
- Slavery -- Chesapeake Bay Region (Md. and Va.) -- History -- 19th century
- African American families -- Chesapeake Bay Region (Md. and Va.) -- History -- 19th century
- Electronic books
- Slaves + Family relationships -- Chesapeake Bay Region (Md. and Va.) -- History -- 19th century
- Slavery + Economic aspects -- Chesapeake Bay Region (Md. and Va.) -- History -- 19th century
- Slave trade -- Southern States -- History -- 19th century
- Slave trade -- Chesapeake Bay Region (Md. and Va.) -- History -- 19th century
- Plantation life -- Chesapeake Bay Region (Md. and Va.) -- History -- 19th century
- Content1