With a fresh take on social dynamics in the antebellum South, Jonathan Daniel Wells contests the popular idea that the Old South was a region of essentially two classes (planters and slaves) until after the Civil War. He argues that, in fact, the region had a burgeoning white middle class — including merchants, doctors, and teachers — that had a profound impact on southern culture, the debate over slavery, and the coming of the Civil War. Wells shows that the growth of the periodical press after 1820 helped build a cultural bridge between the North and the South, and the emerging southern middle class seized upon northern middle-class ideas about gender roles and reform, politics, and the virtues of modernization. Even as it sought to emulate northern progress, however, the southern middle class never abandoned its attachment to slavery. By the 1850s, Wells argues, the prospect of industrial slavery in the South threatened northern capital and labor, causing sectional relations to shift from cooperative to competitive. Rather than simply pitting a backward, slave-labor, agrarian South against a progressive, free-labor, industrial North, Wells argues that the Civil War reflected a more complex interplay of economic and cultural values. “An important book on an important subject. . . . Undoubtedly an important scholarly contribution.” — Civil War History Journal “Excellent and should be read by those interested in the coming of the War.” — Louisiana History “[An] ambitious, well-written, and persistently argued book.” — Florida Historical Quarterly “Notably absent [in studies of the history of the middle-class] has been any attention to the American South. . . . With [this] intelligent analysis of middle-class formation in the antebellum South, that absence is no more. . . . A fresh addition to our understanding of the origins of the Civil War.” — Journal of Southern History “This important book should be required reading for students of the Old South.” — American Historical Review “Wells recovers something that has been buried since at least 1895: the antebellum Southern middle class. . . . Impressive. . . . Enriches and challenges our comprehension of this place and time.” — Arkansas Historical Quarterly “Wells addresses the complex problem of class formation with boldness, deftness, and sensitivity. . . . Merit[s] the attention of all antebellum Southern historians.” — Historian “Wells’s book is not so much a study of the quotidian life of an emerging middle class as it is a fresh look the social and economic sources of the antebellum sectional conflict. As such, it is bold [and] interesting.” — North Carolina Historical Review “In this provocative history, Jonathan Daniel Wells invites a rethinking of pre-Civil War Southern social structure. . . . This is a compelling book about a complicated subject, which effectively opens old and new controversies about the meaning and substance of class in American history.” — Times Literary Supplement “All scholars of antebellum America — north and south — should take seriously the new information and vigor that Wells brings to the study of class formation, sectionalism, and southern distinctiveness.” — Journal of American History “All scholars of antebellum America — north and south — should take seriously the new information and vigor that Wells brings to the study of class formation, sectionalism, and southern distinctiveness.” — Journal of American History Contesting the idea of a two-class South Wells contests the popular idea that the Old South was a region of essentially two classes (planters and slaves) until after the Civil War. He argues instead that by the 1850s the South had a burgeoning middle class very similar to that in the North. It was the South's attraction to industrial slavery, and the potential capital to be made with it, that led the regions into competition, and ultimately to war. Wells contests the popular idea that the Old South was a region of essentially two classes (planters and slaves) until after the Civil War. He argues instead that by the 1850s the South had a burgeoning middle class very similar to that in the North. It was the South's attraction to industrial slavery, and the potential capital to be made with it, that led the regions into competition, and ultimately to war. Jonathan Daniel Wells is associate professor of history and chair of arts and sciences at Johnson and Wales University in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Origins of the Southern Middle Class, 1800-1861 By Jonathan Daniel Wells The University of North Carolina Press Copyright © 2004 The University of North Carolina Press All right reserved. ISBN: 0-8078-5553-7 Contents AcknowledgmentsPrologue. The Symbolism of National Unity: The New England Society of CharlestonIntroductionPart I. Cradle of the Southern Middle Class: Cultural Connections between the Antebellum North and SouthChapter 1. Travel and Migration betw