Abstract
The basic pattern of racial violence in the South was largely determined by the attempts of landowners and commercial farmers to gain mastery over a world turned upside down by the end of slavery. Emancipation raised two dire threats that struck at the heart of the former slave society: the emergence of a free market in labour and the plantocracy's lost grip over land. Landowners across the South mobilized against these twin threats, employing all mechanisms at their disposal to regain their former dominance. This chapter argues that landowners' quest for political and economic control forms the indispensable point of reference for any discussion of extra-legal racial violence, providing the terrain for even plebeian whites to participate in the lynch culture of the New South.
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