Download The Old South Frontier: Cotton Plantations and the Formation of Arkansas Society, 1819-1861 AudioBook Free
On this deeply researched and well-written study, Donald P. McNeilly examines how reasonably wealthy planters and sons of planters immigrated into the virtually vacant lands of Arkansas, seeking their bundle of money and to build themselves as the leaders of a fresh planter aristocracy west of the Mississippi River. These men, sometimes alone, sometimes with family, and usually with slaves, looked for the best land possible, cleared it, planted their crops, and erected crude properties and other buildings. Life was problematic for these would-be leaders of culture and their own families, and especially hard for the slaves who toiled to build fields where they labored to make a crop. McNeilly argues that by the time of Arkansas's statehood in 1836, planters and large farmers experienced secured a carry over their frontier home, and that between 1840 and the Civil War, planters solidified their hold on politics, economics, and culture in Arkansas. The author takes a topical approach to the topic, with chapters on migration, slavery, non-planter whites, politics, and the secession problems of 1860-1861. McNeilly offers a first-rate analysis of the creation of the white, cotton-based culture in Arkansas, shedding light not only on the southern frontier, but also on the proven Old South prior to the Civil War.
