Masterless Men
Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South
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Narrated by:
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Keri Leigh Merritt
About this listen
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.
©2017 Cambridge University Press (P)2019 Keri Leigh MerrittListeners also enjoyed...
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Everything, well, almost everything, you know about American history is wrong because most textbooks and popular history books are written by left-wing academic historians who treat their biases as fact. But fear not; Professor Thomas Woods refutes the popular myths in The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History.
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Highly recommended! Not for the faint of heart!
- By RAC on 12-12-05
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Injustices
- The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted
- By: Ian Millhiser
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Few American institutions have inflicted greater suffering on ordinary people than the Supreme Court of the United States. Since its inception the justices of the Supreme Court have shaped a nation where children toiled in coal mines, where Americans could be forced into camps because of their race, and where a woman could be sterilized against her will by state law.
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Is It HALF FULL or HALF EMPTY ? It Depends !
- By James on 04-01-15
By: Ian Millhiser
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The Slave's Cause
- A History of Abolition
- By: Manisha Sinha
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 30 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Received historical wisdom casts abolitionists as bourgeois, mostly white reformers burdened by racial paternalism and economic conservatism. Manisha Sinha overturns this image, broadening her scope beyond the antebellum period usually associated with abolitionism and recasting it as a radical social movement in which men and women, black and white, free and enslaved, found common ground in causes ranging from feminism and utopian socialism to anti-imperialism and efforts to defend the rights of labor.
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Thorough, convincing and haunting
- By Roger on 07-23-17
By: Manisha Sinha
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The 1619 Project
- A New Origin Story
- By: Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times Magazine, Caitlin Roper - editor, and others
- Narrated by: Nikole Hannah-Jones, Full Cast
- Length: 18 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning “1619 Project” issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This new book substantially expands on that work, weaving together 18 essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with 36 poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance.
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Comprehensive and Cutting
- By Thomas Ray on 12-30-21
By: Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others
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Gateway to Freedom
- The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad
- By: Eric Foner
- Narrated by: J. D. Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The dramatic story of fugitive slaves and the antislavery activists who defied the law to help them reach freedom. They are little known to history: Sydney Howard Gay, an abolitionist newspaper editor; Louis Napoleon, a furniture polisher; Charles B. Ray, a black minister. At great risk they operated the Underground Railroad in New York, a city whose businesses, banks, and politics were deeply enmeshed in the slave economy.
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Hard to stay awake....
- By Chrissie on 02-18-15
By: Eric Foner
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The American Slave Coast
- A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry
- By: Ned Sublette, Constance Sublette
- Narrated by: Robin Eller
- Length: 30 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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The American Slave Coast tells the horrific story of how the slavery business in the United States made the reproductive labor of "breeding women" essential to the expansion of the nation. The book shows how slaves' children, and their children's children, were human savings accounts that were the basis of money and credit. This was so deeply embedded in the economy of the slave states that it could be decommissioned only by emancipation, achieved through the bloodiest war in the history of the United States.
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Get "The Half Has Never Been Told" instead!
- By Ary Shalizi on 11-28-16
By: Ned Sublette, and others
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No More Lies
- By: Dick Gregory
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1972, during the Black Power Movement, iconoclast Dick Gregory challenged one of the foundations of America itself - its history, which had been written almost exclusively from the white male perspective. In No More Lies, this true trailblazer gave voice to African Americans, speaking their truth about the past and race relations in the United States. No More Lies offers this incomparable satirist’s intellectual, conspiratorial, and humorous spin on the facts.
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My Hertiages
- By n/a on 11-25-22
By: Dick Gregory
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100 Amazing Facts About the Negro
- By: Henry Louis Gates Jr.
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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With élan and erudition - and with winning enthusiasm - Henry Louis Gates Jr. gives us a corrective yet loving homage to Rogers' work. Relying on the latest scholarship, Gates leads us on a romp through African, diasporic, and African American history in question-and-answer format. Among the 100 questions: Who were Africa's first ambassadors to Europe? Who was the first black president in North America? Did Lincoln really free the slaves? Who was history's wealthiest person? What percentage of white Americans have recent African ancestry?
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great book
- By Anthony Costello on 06-14-18
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A History of the American People
- By: Paul Johnson
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 48 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Johnson's monumental history of the United States, from the first settlers to the Clinton administration, covers every aspect of American culture: politics, business, art, literature, science, society and customs, complex traditions, and religious beliefs. The story is told in terms of the men and women who shaped and led the nation and the ordinary people who collectively created its unique character.
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A British conservative's view of American history.
- By Mike From Mesa on 06-17-09
By: Paul Johnson
What listeners say about Masterless Men
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- John M Bryant
- 05-25-22
Critical addition to the debate over this history
Balanced Report that in no way minimizes the suffering of blacks under slavery and after the Civil War. However, this fills in the story poor whites and class division in the south. This helps us better understand what really happened, and better respond to the concerns of everyone in order to build a better future. It’s just too bad she had to narrate her own book – she did her best, but she’s not a pro.
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- Willie woodley
- 05-26-22
wanna learn something read this
very informative. alot of this I wasn't aware of. society teaches use from a white supremacy point of view.
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- Tigerron Wells
- 05-04-20
A Story Seldom Told
Masterless Men illuminates a seldom explored portion of the story of American slavery, and exposes the peculiar institution as one that was not simply aimed at perpetuating one racial class’s oppression of another racial class. Instead it paints the arguably more complete picture of American slavery as a system whereby both slaves of African or African American descent and so-called poor or middling class whites were exploited so that members of the planter class could secure all of their labor at below market wages or no wage at all.
If more people were acquainted with this part of the story, one can’t help but wonder how it would impact modern-day debates about wage and labor rights.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Devin K Schaffer
- 05-02-22
Game changer
This book helped close a gap of understanding for me. We’ll researched and written. Bravo.
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- The Alchemist
- 07-22-22
Long but necessary…
New narratives based on fact and not social construct need to become the story!!! Well researched…
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- Randy Speer
- 05-13-19
Excellent Follow Up To "White Trash:...
I had listened to Nancy Isenberg's book-"White Trash: A 400 Year History of Class In America" and want to explore this topic further.
As a white male who grew up in Texas during the Civil Rights era and hearing the false and romanticized narrative about the South, this book confirmed what I though was true. The anti-bellum South was really an undemocratic oligarchy that needed to be totally destroyed for the true ideals of the American experiment to move forward.
The defeat of the Confederacy started that process, however, the process derailed during Reconstruction and allowed vestiges of the old oligarchy to remain and flourish again through Jim Crow laws and economic and voter suppression.
Knowing my heritage and the economic hardships my ancestors experienced they too were victims of this oppressive system even though racial slavery was more dehumanizing and horrendous.
In fact, this system is taking root again with the rise of the economic, academic, media and political elites present in both political parties.
If an egalitarian and non race based society is something that interest you then this is a must listen.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Khakigear
- 05-22-19
A class based look at antebellum society
This is an interesting book, and one that I think is long due. This book takes a look at poor white people during the slavery era, and examines how slavery negatively impacted their status. This book enlightened me, I didn't fully understand what it meant when I had seen that emancipation freed both white and black alike. This book helps to explain it. I do feel however, that perhaps it should have started further back. It has been cited by the venerable late historian Edmund S. Morgan that there was a shift from Indentured labor to African Slave labor, and I feel that this should have been cited in this story, as I believe it adds to the overall story of poor whites in the South. Also I feel the book should have done more to elaborate on the role that a career in Overseeing plantations played. It has been cited by former slaves such as Henry Clay Bruce that this was a position this class of men frequently occupied, and relished. Explaining this role would add to the complexities of class in the South, but I feel the author didn't go into it to maintain a more sympathetic view. But overall, I recommend this book for those who want to fully comprehend the damaging effects of slavery.
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3 people found this helpful
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- robistar
- 09-04-19
Good Information
I found this book informative, but as a history or even a sociological study, I must question some of the conclusions because the data is so sparse.
I especially object to any statement beginning, “they must have thought,” or “must have felt” which is why I subtracted a star
In addition I would seriously suggest skipping the audiobook & going with the written work. This is a 17 hour advertisement for the benefits of professional narration. The author is zealously earnest and emphasizes 2 words in 3. There is no phrasing & many mispronunciations. I kept talking to my iPhone: Indigent, indigent, indigent! Merriam-Webster doesn’t even have an alternate pronunciation.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Katherine Daniels
- 07-13-21
Detailed, well-researched, and informative
This is a wonderfully detailed and well-researched exploration of the plight of poor whites and enslaved black people in the antebellum south, the Civil War, and the immediate aftermath of the war. I learned so much more from this book than the sleeping football coach who taught American History to me in high school.
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- Anonymous User
- 02-27-24
What could of happened
This book really makes one wonder what could of been if the poor had an actual voice in the antebellum south. This book also explains very well the situation of poor whites and how they were treated by the master class during this time period. It also gives information and examples of how many poor white men were forces to fight for the confederacy during the civil war. The author provides very detailed accounts of enslaved people and poor whites.
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