Reinterpreting the Plain Folk: Nonslaveholding Whites of the Antebellum South

这项研究将导致一本名为《重新解读平原民俗：南北战争前南方没有奴隶制的白人》的书将与佛罗里达大学出版社出版。它基于大量的档案证据以及过去20年的相关学术研究，并将对内战前夕非奴隶制丁氏白人的所有多样性进行全面分析。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都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仍然很少，在数量上占压倒性多数。自20世纪80年代以来，许多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欣赏。然而，最近的文学作品令人震惊地采取了地方性和特殊性的方法，从而加剧了成功地将低层白人置于旧南方社会框架内的问题。因此，我们非常了解一些州的普通白人，例如密西西比州和佐治亚州，以及某些非奴隶主群体，如工匠，但我们没有将非奴隶主作为一个整体来考虑的总体评估。定义和概念化存在于不同地理位置的农民、租户、牧民、工匠和劳动者的异质混合仍然非常困难，他们被不同地描述为疯子、贫穷的白人、自耕农和普通人。这本书将填补这一空白，这是自弗兰克·奥斯利(Frank Owsley)的《南方平原民俗》(Plain Folk of the South，1949)以来，第一本关于非奴隶制白人的一般性专著。这项研究集中在1850年至1865年期间，主要目的是将最好的学术知识与档案资料结合起来，撰写一本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、权威的记述。

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.