"Identity, Dissent, and the Roots of Georgia’s Middle Class, 1848-1865 " by Thomas Robinson
 
Identity, Dissent, and the Roots of Georgia’s Middle Class, 1848-1865 (2015-2016)

Identity, Dissent, and the Roots of Georgia’s Middle Class, 1848-1865 (2015-2016)

Description

Thomas W. Robinson grew up in Florida and is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Mississippi. He received a Bachelor's degree in History and a Master's degree in Library and Information Studies from Florida State University. After working in public history at both museums and archives for several years, he decided to go back to school and earned a Master's degree in History from James Madison University before pursuing a Doctorate from the University of Mississippi in 2012. His research interests include southern dissent, southern nationalism, citizenship and identity, sectionalism, and the Western theater of the war. His dissertation will examine the growth of a white middle class in Georgia during the late antebellum period. This group formed their own distinct identity and ideology that often conflicted with southern norms. Many middle class Georgians became dissenters during the secession crisis and the war years and the dissertation will hone in on those men and women. Mr. Robinson hopes to broaden the understanding of the scope and source of dissent in the South during the Civil War Era.

This dissertation, which focuses on Georgia from 1848 until 1865, argues that a middle class formed in the state during the antebellum period. By the time secession occurred, the class coalesced around an ideology based upon modernization, industrialization, reform, occupation, politics, and northern influence. These factors led the doctors, lawyers, merchants, ministers, shopkeepers, and artisans who made up Georgia’s middle class to view themselves as different than Georgians above or below them on the economic scale. The feeling was often mutual, as the rich viethe middle class as a threat due to their income and education level while the poor were envious of the middle class. Many middle class occupations, especially merchants and shopkeepers, began to be seen as dangerous, greedy outliers in the southern community. The middle class, the negative view asserted, were more interested in money and did not harmonize in the otherwise virtuous, agrarian society. This study continues through the end of the Civil War and argues that the middle class in Georgia was a source of dissent and opposed secession and then the Confederacy. This is not to say that all middle class Georgians opposed secession or the war, but many middle class Georgians vehemently opposed secession and never accepted the Confederacy. Even if they did, many quickly turned their back once it was obvious the war was not going to be short and the Confederacy was taking away many civil liberties. These were not poor, mountain folk as many previous studies have identified those who dissented from the southern cause. Instead, these were successful, mostly urban men and women who felt the war would ruin them economically while at the same time the planters, who had become their political enemies, continued to dominate power in the state post-secession. All of these factors led many middle class Georgians to reject secession and the Confederacy. In turn, the antebellum middle class in Georgia laid the foundation for the post-war power structure and the rise of the southern middle class in the New South era.

Publication Date

4-15-2016

Relational Format

dissertation/thesis

Identity, Dissent, and the Roots of Georgia’s Middle Class, 1848-1865 (2015-2016)

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