The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders [Paperback]

James Oakes (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0393317056 | ISBN-13: 978-0393317053 | Publication Date: January 17, 1998

"A sweeping and spirited history of Southern slaveholders."—David Herbert Donald

This pathbreaking social history of the slaveholding South marks a turn in our understanding of antebellum America and the coming of the Civil War. Oakes's bracing analysis breaks the myth that slaveholders were a paternalistic aristocracy dedicated to the values of honor, race, and section. Instead they emerge as having much in common with their entrepreneurial counterparts in the North: they were committed to free-market commercialism and political democracy for white males. The Civil War was not an inevitable conflict between civilizations on different paths but the crack-up of a single system, the result of people and events.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Invaluable. (Los Angeles Times )

About the Author

James Oakes is the Graduate School Humanities Professor and Professor of History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He and his family live in New York City.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (January 17, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393317056
• ISBN-13: 978-0393317053
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #542,277 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Study of the Plurality of Slaveholders, November 16, 2000

By 

Ricky Hunter (New York City, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders (Paperback)

James Oakes' The Ruling Class is a history of American slaveholders that effectively dispels the image of the paternalistic plantation aristocrat as the definitive, or even typical, portrait of the average slaveholder. It was interesting to see how much the Southeners and the Northeners had in common in political and ecomonic outlook. The average slaveholder was a grasping capitilist continually on the move and trying to advance himself. Slaves were a commodity to be used in this regard, as were the slaveholders' democratic politics and the expansion south and westward in the United States. The paternalist image built up in mythology after the Civil War existed but it was not representative. This book is effective is demonstrating the ways in which the slaves were an active, often rebellious, factor in this capititist drama as they also rejected any paternalist notion of their enslavement and saw the truth of the picture. They were a commodity both for labour and commerce. The book is excellant in portraying a complicated picture of the slaveholding class that involved many people of different ethnic, religious, political, and economic backgrounds all bound up in a capitilist explotiation of the slaves as a source of upward mobility in a very fluid society. A good place to begin to learn about this period of history.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very, very interesting read, November 28, 2005

By 

Thomas W. Robinson (Dayton, VA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders (Paperback)

I like to consider myself a student of 19th century American history, and especially of the South. But, I was not that knowledgable on the everyday lives of slaves or their masters. While there are several good works on the lives of slaves, I couldn't find a decent one on slaveholders until I picked this one up. Oakes has crafted an excellent look at what it was like, day to day, for the average slaveholder. Rather than looking at just the large plantation owners, he delves into the lives of slaveholders who owned 1 slave or 100. He focuses not on just one state, but several. The book was both well researched and well written. Most of the book reads very well because Oakes cites numerous diaries, letters, and newspapers. The book makes for quite a good read and will really add to your knowledge of slaveholders in the South.

5.0 out of 5 stars The rise of American slavery and how Captialism and Politics Intersected, July 26, 2011

By 

Errol D. Alexander "Leadership writer" (Tacoma, Wa, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders (Paperback)

I think the history of American Slaveholders and how they ruled as outlined in James Oakes's book is a must read and very well done to its subject. When one compares the economic forces of many different societies and ruling classes in America and elsewhere, it becomes clear that captialism was the chief engine for the rise of slavery, once one explored the alternatives. The other dominating force controlling American Slavery was the politics within a society (ie. events, laws and personalities)

Like Oakes I see economic forces and politics as like legs in a forcep operating similar to jaws in a pair of pliers squeezing slavery to be shaped a certain way or releasing it to take its own form. Further slavery seldom grow in an idle economic down time, during droughts or natural diasters, but it grows by leaps and bounds when a society is prospering. Also certain forms of slavery can grow faster in times of war. In short, captialism changes the type of ownership and the laws governing the slaves versus the rights of masters. Politics determine the pace of these changes.

Setting all that aside, this became clearer when researching the story of Archer Alexander (an ancestor 1815-1880) as written by W. G. Eliot over a sixty-five life history, indicating vividly how his life as slave was totally different depending on the different locations where he was residing, economic forces and military laws as well as the reigning political thought at that time. Seems so simple, yet most of us historians and leadership professors skip over how people(especially the slave) react to these forces. The discipline of history is not just recording events but reflecting the human element- people acting out of as a series of emotions (pasion, revenge, love, anger, fear, etc) that create history, not the other way around. Oakes taps into this range of emotions explaining how certain people will rule over others because of an emotional directed view of ruling/leadership.

Errol D. Alexander, Arrowhead Institute, University Place, Washington