Customer Reviews

Masters of the Big House: Elite Slaveholders of the Mid-Nineteenth Century South

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William Kauffman Scarborough of the University of Southern Mississippi is a scholar of consumate skill. His research into the heart of the Southern Plantation Society provides the history student with a keen insight into what made the masters of Dixie tick. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, Scarborough is able to paint the best picture to date of the power and influence the leaders of the Old South wielded over their region. Scarborough delves fearlessly into their lust for wealth, their roles in the secession crises, their relations with their slaves and one another, and their reaction to the South's defeat in the Civil War. The psychology of the South's cotton culture is explored in great detail as Scarborough peels back the layers of the onion and clears the fog that literature (Gone With the Wind, Absalom Absalom) has surounded the great planters with, giving the reader a truly human look at the Antebellum South's Premiere men. An excellent book for anyone interested in Southern History.

I can only echo the sentiments of the previous reviewer. Professor Scarborough has written a very interesting, highly researched and detailed work. Still, though, the book is written very clearly and reads very well. I had to read this book in one week in order to review it for a class and was able to do so despite its length (and the fact I'm a slow reader) because of how interesting and well written it is. Although some may wonder what we could learn from another book on slaveholders, surprisingly, Scarborough is one of the first to look solely at elite slaveholders. Furthermore, he uncovers many things that even the PhD professor in Southern history who taught my class didn't know--many of the slaveholders, and their families, were well educated, had ties to the North (often sending their children to be educated in the North), traveled extensively, were more cultured and worldly than previous thought, and many were opposed to secession. This is just an inkling of the things uncovered in this work. Scarborough has wisely broken the chapters up by topic and that makes the book more understandable and easier to digest. If you have any interest in Southern history, especially of the antebellum era, pick this up. It is well worth the read.