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The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders First Print Edition

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James Oakes (Author)
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4.1 out of 5 stars 8 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-0393317053
ISBN-10: 0393317056
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 336 pages
  • Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; First Print edition (January 17, 1998)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0393317056
  • ISBN-13: 978-0393317053
  • Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.9 x 8.3 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #942,277 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 starsVery, very interesting read
By Thomas W. Robinson on November 28, 2005
Format: 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.
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4.0 out of 5 starsWonderful Study of the Plurality of Slaveholders
By Ricky Hunter on November 16, 2000
Format: 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.
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5.0 out of 5 starsThe rise of American slavery and how Captialism and Politics Intersected
By Errol D. Alexander on July 26, 2011
Format: 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.Read more ›
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4.0 out of 5 starsGreat book on a fairly well covered topic
By Jonathan Weller on November 5, 2015
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
The Ruling Race is an in-depth look at the demographics of the slaveholding class in the years prior to the Civil War. James Oakes’ book attempts to make two main points: the development of the diversity of the southern slave owners, and to explore the patterns of political ambitions, ideological beliefs and demographics the “ruling class.” Oakes also addresses the complexities of the slave economy in relation to American capitalism, while pointing out the contradiction of slave holding in a society that put an immense value on freedom.

Oakes makes his first two points successfully; however, his most interesting point is when he attacks Eugene Genovese’s idea of a benevolent paternalistic southern society. Oakes explains that the South was just as entrepreneurial and capitalistic, and that most slave owners were just as much market materialists as their northern rivals. While Genovese’s argument is a tough one to refute, Oakes successfully navigates the reader through Genovese’s assertions to show that slave owning paternalism was not the driving economic force in the antebellum South, having and being able to maintain their human property was.

Oakes’ work is an essential read to anyone interested in the antebellum slave-owning South. The book offers an effective, yet viable explanation for the continued existence of slavery throughout the region, and why the South was so willing to fight, and die for an institution that many in the country saw as archaic.
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