This book is a statewide study of Tennessee's agricultural population between 1850 and 1880. Relying upon massive samples of census data as well as plantation accounts, Freedmen's Bureau Records, and the Tennessee Civil War Veterans Questionnaires, the author provides the first systematic comparison of the socioeconomic bases of plantation and nonplantation areas both before and immediately after the Civil War. Although the study applauds scholars' growing appreciation of southern diversity during the nineteenth century, it argues that recent scholarship both oversimplifies distinctions between Black Belt and Upcountry and exaggerates the socioeconomic heterogeneity of the South as a whole. It also challenges several largely unsubstantiated assumptions concerning the postbellum reorganization of southern agriculture, particularly those regarding the impoverishment of southern whites and the immobilization and economic repression of southern freedmen.

Introduction; 1. 'The most honorable besness in the country': farm operations at the close of the Antebellum era; 2. 'Honest industry and good recompense': wealth distribution and economic mobility on the eve of the Civil War; 3. 'God only knows what will result from this war': wealth patterns among white farmers, 1860-80; 4. 'Change and uncertainty may be anticipated': freedmen and the reorganisation of Tennessee agriculture; 5. Agricultural change to 1880; Conclusion.