American History

In his book, Poor Whites of the Antebellum South Tenants and Laborers in Central North Carolina and Northeast Mississippi, Charles Bolton makes some interesting points about a part of history that he feels has been mostly underserved over the course of historical study. The author takes a long, hard look at the period just after the Civil War, but he does not handle this in a traditional sense. Instead, the author seeks to recall what life might have been like for poor white people during that time. While he acknowledges that the lives of freed slaves were obviously quite difficult and different just after the Civil War, he indicates that poor, white people without land ownership rights also had a difficult time during that period.

This work is primarily a social and cultural historical take. It reviews the individual situations that different people encountered, but that is only meant to provide a framework for the larger social arguments that are being posed. The bigger question is how this entire group of people was treated during that time and how they responded to the treatment.

The authors primary intention for writing this work was to highlight the actual plight of these individuals and to show that the reconstruction of the United States presented more challenges than many people have previously studied. He quite clearly indicates, in his thesis statements, that the poor, landless white people were outcasts during that time. His primary point is that these people were ridiculed and they were chastised by all members of society, and that they faced some of the same aspects of ridicule that their black counterparts faced. His subsidiary conclusion is that not all of the social discrimination came on the basis of race during that time. Though the author certainly does not seek to downplay the effect of race and the mistreatment of freed slaves just after the Civil War, he is quick to point out that plenty of other groups faced similar treatment. The power system was such that people who owned land controlled just about everything that went on in society. That meant that those people who were without land were called names and were alienated from society. Though history may choose to forget this when it teaches about what happened just after the Civil War, the author highlights it in his primary arguments and his secondary conclusions throughout the work.

His goal with the thesis statement is to overturn the odd perception that all white people had it good, while all black people did not. This seems to be the way that history has portrayed the years shortly following the Civil War, and the facts just do not bear out this interpretation. It is easy and simple to lump all white individuals in together and assume that everyone had it good following the Civil War, but the facts that the author presents tell a different story. They tell and inform of the power of land ownership in that society, and they particularly tell of the impact that land ownership had on the social dynamic, even for people who had white skin.

The author uses a number of different sources to support his arguments, which is important because he is coming at an issue from a somewhat unpopular viewpoint. This is important to the overall construction of his thesis statements. His documentation is adequate, both because of the number of sources and their power. He uses a solid mixture of secondary sources and primary sources, leaning primarily on the latter in his effort to recreate a picture of history. Social historians have a more difficult time than most, because the majority of what they deal with has to do with the human condition. Still, the author does a nice job of figuring out exactly what took place during that time by interviewing people, studying old documents, and relying upon actual facts to construct his arguments. One of the best things that the author does is that he takes diaries and memoirs written from people at that time. If one is going to construct what life might have been like for an entire group of people, then it makes sense to actually get some representation from those particular people. This is what the author does, and he uses those sources throughout the book.

Because the time period in question was so long ago, it is hard for the author to come up with too many interviews that could validly address what happened. Instead, he relies upon letters and other forms of correspondence between people during that time. He takes this to be an accurate and honest representation of how things might have been, since it is assumed that those individuals writing the letters had no reason to lie. This is important in his formation of the individual stories that make up the cultural history that he is studying. He has to take many individual views and synthesize them into one take on the poor white people just after the Civil War, which is a difficult task. Though difficult, it is something that the author does almost seamlessly.

The themes presented in the book are quite convincing, mostly because of the support and the way the author frames all of his arguments. He makes it very clear, using documentation from many different sources, that land ownership defined what people were all about in that society. Starting with point, it is easy for the reader to see why a person without land ownership rights might run into a huge problem when trying to have a role in society. The author seems to have some trouble with the connections between how white society and black society were treated during that time, and this is something that could have been stronger in the book. Additionally, some of the anecdotal evidence seems to miss the mark, and does not relate as strongly to the main points as the author might have originally believed. Still, this differing take on an old, well studied time period is something that adds to the knowledge base. Those who study the United States just after the Civil War have something new to consider, as the old themes have been exhausted up to this point. Though the work is by no means perfect, it goes many places and forces the reader to take into account new considerations. For this reason, it is a success. The way the author makes his points with conviction, and the way he continues to throw new evidence at the reader is something that can be appreciated by any historian. He does not hold that his claims are true just because he asserts them to be true. Instead, he spends his time defending those claims and making sure that the reader understands exactly why he feels the way that he feels.