{"product_id":"masterless-men-poor-whites-and-slavery-in-the-antebellum-south-9781107184244","title":"Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South","description":"Analyzing land policy, labor, and legal history, Keri Leigh Merritt reveals what happens to excess workers when a capitalist system is predicated on slave labor. With the rising global demand for cotton - and thus, slaves - in the 1840s and 1850s, the need for white laborers in the American South was drastically reduced, creating a large underclass who were unemployed or underemployed. These poor whites could not compete - for jobs or living wages - with profitable slave labor. Though impoverished whites were never subjected to the daily violence and degrading humiliations of racial slavery, they did suffer tangible socio-economic consequences as a result of living in a slave society. Merritt examines how these 'masterless' men and women threatened the existing Southern hierarchy and ultimately helped push Southern slaveholders toward secession and civil war.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eMerritt, Keri Leigh:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - Keri Leigh Merritt is an independent scholar in Atlanta, Georgia. Merritt's work on poverty and inequality has garnered multiple awards, and she is a co-editor of a volume on American South labor history.","brand":"Cambridge University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50332342321426,"sku":"9781107184244","price":73.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_2b6e59b1-41ff-4823-81b4-fcd740d04299.jpg?v=1727834960","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/masterless-men-poor-whites-and-slavery-in-the-antebellum-south-9781107184244","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}