Many Excellent People: Power and Privilege in North Carolina, 1850-1900

Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies

by Paul D. Escott

Many Excellent People examines the nature of North Carolina's social system, particularly race and class relations, power, and inequality, during the last half of the nineteenth century. Paul Escott portrays North Carolina's major social groups, focusing on the elite, the ordinary white farmers or workers, and the blacks, and analyzes their attitudes, social structure, and power relationships. Quoting frequently from a remarkable array of letters, journals, diaries, and other primary sources, he shows vividly the impact of the Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, Populism, and the rise of the New South industrialism on southern society.

Working within the new social history and using detailed analyses of five representative counties, wartime violence, Ku Klux Klan membership, stock-law legislation, and textile mill records, Escott reaches telling conclusions on the interplay of race, class, and politics. Despite fundamental political and economic reforms, Escott argues, North Carolina's social system remained as hierarchical and undemocratic in 1900 as it had been in 1850.

Genres: History

344 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1985

About the author

Paul D. Escott is a professor emeritus, historian, and author. He is a professor at Wake Forest University and served as the college's dean for nine years. He has written some 13 books.
He graduated with a B.A. from Harvard College and with M.A. and P.h.D. degrees from Duke University.

Reviews

[Sally · Rating 5 out of 5]

Important NC history of its political elite and how desperately they worked to maintain their power after slavery ended.

[Ram · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice textbook-style survey of 19th-century North Carolina social and political history. Escott turns a bit maudlin at the end, but this was my first brush with the problems of NC's past outside of my parents' discontent with its conservative assholery, so I hold it a bit dearer than it probably deserves.