Reinterpreting the Plain Folk: Nonslaveholding Whites of the Antebellum South

这项研究将导致一本书，题为重新解释平原民间：没有奴隶持有白人的战前南部将与佛罗里达大学出版社出版。它是基于广泛的档案证据以及过去二十年的相关奖学金，并将提供一个全面的分析nonslaveho！在内战前夕，白人，在他们所有的多样性中。在过去的30年里，关于美国奴隶制的学术研究的质量和数量已经改变了我们对南北战争前南方社会的理解，奴隶制书籍继续以惊人的速度出现。相比之下，关于南方非奴隶主的书籍，超过威尔明的数字多数，仍然很少。自20世纪80年代以来，一些重要的研究大大增加了我们对非奴隶制经验的某些方面的理解。然而，最近的文学作品却出人意料地采取了一种地方性和特殊性的方法，从而加剧了将下层白人成功地置于旧南方社会框架内的问题。因此，我们对某些州的普通白人，例如密西西比和格鲁吉亚，以及某些非奴隶主群体，如工匠，了解很多，但我们没有把非奴隶主作为一个整体来考虑的全面评估。在定义和概念化农民、佃户、牧民、工匠和劳动者的异质混合体方面仍然存在很大的困难，这些混合体存在于各种地理位置，他们被描述成各种各样的人，如疯子、穷白人、自耕农和普通人。这本书将填补这一空白，提出了自弗兰克奥斯利的南方平原人民（1949年）以来第一个非蓄奴白人的一般专着。集中在1850年和1865年之间的时期，这项研究的主要目的是将最好的奖学金与档案资料相结合，撰写一份关于美国内战前夕南方非奴隶主及其与奴隶和种植园主关系的单一，权威的帐户。

This research will result in a book entitled Reinterpreting the Plain Folk: No slaveholding Whites of the Antebellum South to be published with the University Press of Florida. It is based upon extensive archival evidence as well as relevant scholarship of the past two decades and will provide a comprehensive analysis of nonslaveho!ding whites, in all their diversity, on the eve of the Civil War. The quality and quantity of scholarship on American slavery in the last 30 years has transformed our understanding of the society of the antebellum South and slavery books continue to appear at an astonishing rate. By contrast, books on southern nonslaveholders, the over Whelming numerical majority, remain few and far between. Since the 1980s, a number of significant studies have greatly increased our appreciation of certain aspects of the nonslaveholding experience. However, recent literature has oveJWhelmingly taken a local and particularistic approach thereby exacerbating the problem of successfully placing lower class whites within the framework of society in the Old South. Thus we know a great deal about ordinary whites in some states, Mississippi and Georgia for example, and about certain groups of nonslaveholders, like artisans, but we have no overall assessment considering nonslaveholders as a whole.There remains great difficulty in defining and conceptualising the heterogeneous mixture of farmers, tenants, herders, artisans, and labourers, existing in a variety of geographical locations, who have variously been described as crackers, poor whites, yeomen, and plain folk. This book will fill that gap by presenting the first general monograph on nonslaveholding whites since Frank Owsley's Plain Folk of the South (1949). Concentrating on the period between 1850 and 1865, the primary aim of this research is to blend together the best scholarship with archival sources to write a single, authoritative, account about southern nonslaveholders and their relations with slaves and planters on the eve of the American Civil War.