Slavery,Democracy,and the Problem of Planter Authority in the Nineteenth-century U.S. South

Abstract

Slavery, Democracy and the Problem of Planter Authority in the Nineteenth-century US South

Wealthy slaveholders in the nineteenth-century US South helped drive the creation and development of American democracy. They combined a determination to uphold the race and class inequalities of hereditary slavery with an apparently paradoxical commitment to the democratic principles of the American Revolution. By forming cross-class political alliances with lower-class white men, slaveholders used democracy for their own ends, amassing disproportionate political authority. The American Civil War and the abolition of slavery challenged their authority, and pointed the way towards a new, bi-racial democracy in the South. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century a reconstituted white southern elite enjoyed a new dominance, thanks to innovative forms of white supremacist politics. Throughout the century, this shifting elite adapted to changing political circumstances, using «democratic means» to sustain their «noble ways».