The Southern Fault Line

Throughout the entirety of its history, the white South has been dominated by opposing perspectives on the desirability of democracy and equality. Historically the key dividing line was slave ownership, and that split persisted long after the Civil War. Plantation oligarchs rejected democracy, while small farmers in the upcountry embraced it--if only for whites. Drawing from his own family's centuries--old roots in the region, the eminent American politics scholar Bryan Jones compares the experiences of a slaveholding line with three non-slaveholding lines to retell the entire history of the region. Through his family's history across a host of Southern states--South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Texas--he demonstrates in vivid detail the ceaseless battle between Southern oligarchy and democracy--and how racial politics threads through all of it.