One South or Many?
Plantation Belt and Upcountry in Civil War-Era Tennessee

This book is a state-wide study of Tennessee's agricultural population between 1850 and 1880.

Robert Tracy McKenzie (Author)

9780521526111, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 4 July 2002

228 pages, 13 b/w illus. 44 tables
22.9 x 16 x 1.5 cm, 0.34 kg

"Robert Tracy McKenzie's intelligent and gracefully-written book takes a new look at the long-standing assumption of diversity within the nineteenth-century South...By relating such different locations to similar regions in the South generally, this thorough, creative, and persuasive study suggests several possible answers to the important question posed by the book's title...McKenzie presents this complex picture in clean, clear, and direct prose. Those who might blanch at the prospect of reading a monograph based on quantitative data need not fear this book, for it is free of jargon and cryptic mathematical formulas...McKenzie convincingly and impressively analyzes the methods used in other works, makes critical adjustments, adds his own research, and produces a wealth of evidence to support his arguments." The Journal of East Tennessee History

This book is a state-wide study of Tennessee's agricultural population between 1850 and 1880. Relying upon massive samples of census data as well as plantation accounts, the author provides the first systematic comparison of the socioeconomic bases of plantation and non-plantation areas both before and immediately after the Civil War. Although the study applauds scholars' growing appreciation of southern diversity during the nineteenth century, it argues that recent scholarship both oversimplifies distinctions between Black Belt and Upcountry and exaggerates the socioeconomic heterogeneity of the South as a whole. It also challenges several largely unsubstantiated assumptions concerning the postbellum reorganisation of southern agriculture, particularly those regarding the immiseration of southern whites and the immobilization and economic repression of southern freedmen.

Introduction
1. 'The most honorable besness in the country': farm operations at the close of the Antebellum era
2. 'Honest industry and good recompense': wealth distribution and economic mobility on the eve of the Civil War
3. 'God only knows what will result from this war': wealth patterns among white farmers, 1860–80
4. 'Change and uncertainty may be anticipated': freedmen and the reorganisation of Tennessee agriculture
5. Agricultural change to 1880
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], History of the Americas [HBJK]