After my last disappointment, I've started another book with which, so far, I'm delighted with: Mark V. Wetherington's Plain Folk's Fight: The Civil War & Reconstruction in Piney Woods Georgia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 2005).I bought the book based on the tacit recommendation of Chandra Manning, who cited it over and over in the footnotes to her wonderful What This Cruel War Was Over.
Mr. Wetherington won me over immediately. In the opening pages, he discussed and for the most part adopted Stephanie McCurry's definition of yeomen (or "plain folk," the term he prefers for reasons he explains) as including households with fewer than ten slaves (note to Mr. W: study up on the difference between "less" and "fewer").
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