Masters of the Big House: Elite Slaveholders of the Mid-Nineteenth-Century South

by William Kauffman Scarborough

William Kauffman Scarborough has produced a work of incomparable scope and depth, offering the challenge to see afresh one of the most powerful groups in American history the wealthiest southern planters who owned 250 or more slaves in the census years of 1850 and 1860. The identification and tabulation in every slaveholding state of these lords of economic, social, and political influence reveals a highly learned class of men who set the tone for southern society while also involving themselves in the wider world of capitalism. Scarborough examines the demographics of elite families, the educational philosophy and religiosity of the nabobs, gender relations in the Big House, slave management methods, responses to secession, and adjustment to the travails of Reconstruction and an alien postwar world. AUTHOR A professor of history at the University of Southern Mississippi, William Kauffman Scarborough is the author of The Plantation Management in the Old South and editor of The Diary of Edmund Ruffin. He is a recipient of the B. L. C. Wailes Award and the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence for the entire body of his work. A past president of the Mississippi Historical Society and the St. George Tucker Society, he lives in Hattiesburg.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

521 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2003

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rare five star rating.
I won't reiterate what other reviewers have already said, but yes, this book is a masterpiece. Important for both scholars and students and general interest history readers, this book is accessible to all. When reading you find that you don't want it to end. Suffice it to say it is an extremely informative look at the top slave holding households of the mid-nineteenth century South.

[Loretta Gonzalez · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an insightful view into meticulous record keeping by the landowners, but also into their concern
with social standing, i.e. who owned more slaves,
how many were men, who bred the best workers etc.
What's painful to read is how little of emotion was
connected to each slave, I don't doubt that a very
small percentage of slave owners had a genuine concern
and affection for their slaves but largely they
were viewed as moneymakers. Sadly these records are
probably the only way some people, regardless of racial
descent, were able to track ancestry and family
history. It is a subtle reminder of just how efficient
the nazis were also.

[Kent · Rating 3 out of 5]

About time somebody undertook this study.

[Danny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Looks at the most wealthy slaveholders in the South, specifically those who owned at a minimum 250 enslaved persons. The amount of research is amazing, but the writing style of Scarborough can almost appear sympathetic towards these planters in some areas. I understand approaching these past historical figures with a degree of grace, but emphatically language is necessary in denouncing their crimes against humanity. A weird one.

[David Bird · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prof Scarborough brings together the fruits of a very impressive amount of research in this volume. Where he is less than fully successful, to my mind, is a failure to approach his subjects with a properly critical eye. Although there are comments acknowledging that slavery was awful for the enslaved, one has the sense that the author admires the elite masters who form the group under study a great deal, and in seemingly every instance accepts their own self-assessments.

Other studies have made clear that enslavers consistently downplayed the violence and emphasized their paternal care, while alternate sources suggest a different mix. Edward J Baptist has observed that scholars consistently take the eyewitness testimony of white sources while discounting that of the enslaved. Prof Scarborough is the most extreme example of this that I have encountered.

Some specific instances of this will illustrate this apparent bias. First, in the account of the war period, the book spends a great deal more time on the minority of the enslaved who chose to remain with their masters when presented with an opportunity for freedom. While ackowledging that sales broke up enslaved families, Prof Scarborough emphasizes instances where efforts were made not to, and accepts the self-ascribed motive of compassion. While that may have been an element, studies of fugitives suggest that family ties were often a decisive factor in decisions not to flee, so a master who preserved a family was binding his slave with an emotional bond more powerful than physical coercion. Scarborough also always refers to Lincoln's party as the "'Black Republicans'," even when he is not quoting any individual who deployed that racist usage.

Another point which also demonstrates a work seemingly more motivated by sentimentality than critical judgment: the author rejects, flat out, that plantation mistresses were oppressed. The argument that they were, I admit, is not much better. Far more accurate to say that they generally did not (or did)see themselves as oppressed than to attempt to deliver a verdict.

[Elissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

The biographical sketches are very interesting.