white liberty and Black slavery in Augusta's hinterlands
English language
Published July 17, 1987 by Wesleyan University Press.
In 1861, only about one-quarter of white southern families owned slaves, yet the vast majority of nonslave-owning whites followed southern planters into a long and bloody war to defend slavery. In doing so, they raised the obvious question: Why? What was it about the nature of class and race relations in the Old South that led them to such sacrifice? - Introduction.
One of a number of local studies of southern towns/counties/states that emerged in the 1980s and early 1990s. Richly researched and detailed. As the subtitle suggests, it explores how white people used the enslavement of Black people to bolster their own arguments for liberty.
