Masterless Men

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 Socioeconomic 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.