Product Description

At the close of the American Revolution, Charleston, South Carolina, was the wealthiest city in the new nation, with the highest per-capita wealth among whites and the largest number of enslaved residents. Maurie D. McInnis explores the social, political, and material culture of the city to learn how--and at what human cost--Charleston came to be regarded as one of the most refined cities in antebellum America.

While other cities embraced a culture of democracy and egalitarianism, wealthy Charlestonians cherished English notions of aristocracy and refinement, defending slavery as a social good and encouraging the growth of southern nationalism. Members of the city's merchant-planter class held tight to the belief that the clothes they wore, the manners they adopted, and the ways they designed house lots and laid out city streets helped secure their place in social hierarchies of class and race. This pursuit of refinement, McInnis demonstrates, was bound up with their determined efforts to control the city's African American majority. She then examines slave dress, mobility, work spaces, and leisure activities to understand how Charleston slaves negotiated their lives among the whites they served.

The textures of lives lived in houses, yards, streets, and public spaces come into dramatic focus in this lavishly illustrated portrait of antebellum Charleston. McInnis's innovative history of the city combines the aspirations of its would-be nobility, the labors of the African slaves who built and tended the town, and the ambitions of its architects, painters, writers, and civic promoters.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #885450 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-13
• Released on: 2005-05-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 576 pages

Review
"Poignant. . . . Lavishly illustrated portrait of the antebellum South." -- Charleston Magazine, February, 2006

Review
"Help[s] unravel the complicated intentions in the cycles of creation and remembrance that have shaped Charleston across two centuries."
— Journal of Architectural Historians

From the Inside Flap
This richly illustrated volume examines Charleston's social and political culture as revealed in its material culture--dress, art, household goods, and architecture--when the city was the wealthiest in the new nation.

Customer Reviews

A great book
I just purchased this book and have found it to be already invaluable in appreciating antebellum Charleston for what it was and understanding modern Charleston and its nostalgic nature. As a Charlestonian who grew up in the heart of the old city, this book has given me insight into a world I should have been more familiar with. Im sure any Charleston or American History enthusiast would want this book.

Personal reading
Great insight into Antebellum Charleston and the South! A Great read as well.............