Many excellent people power and privilege in North Carolina, 1850-1900

Summary: Many Excellent People examines the nature of North Carolina's social system, particularly race and class relations, power and inequality, during the last half of the 19th century. Paul Escott portrays North Carolina's major social groups, focusing on the elite, the ordinary white farmers or workers, and the blacks, and analyzes their attitudes, social structure and power relationships. Quoting frequently from a remarkable array of letters, journals, diaries and other primary sources, he shows vividly the impact of the Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, Populism and the rise of the New South industrialism on southern society. Working within the new social history and using detailed analyses of five representative counties, wartime violence, Ku Klux Klan membership, stock-law legislation and textile mill records, Escott reaches telling conclusions on the interplay of race, class and politics. Despite fundamental political and economic reforms, Escott argues, North Carolina's social system remained as hierarchical and undemocratic in 1900 as it had been in 1850.

Electronic resources