The Origins of the Southern Middle Class, 1800-1861
, by Wells, Jonathan DanielNote: Supplemental materials are not guaranteed with Rental or Used book purchases.
- ISBN: 9780807855539 | 0807855537
- Cover: Paperback
- Copyright: 9/1/2004
Wells contests the popular idea that the Old South was a region of essentially two classes (planters and slaves) until after the Civil War. He argues instead that by the 1850s the South had a burgeoning middle class very similar to that in the North. It was the South's attraction to industrial slavery, and the potential capital to be made with it, that led the regions into competition, and ultimately to war.