Charity in the Antebellum South
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Warwick
Department Name: History
Abstract
The project demonstrates that benevolence in the antebellum Southern United States acted to bind whites together in the face of external threats to their way of life. Elites used charity to shape the attitudes of the poor towards the South so that when the Civil War came there would be no doubt as to the loyalty of the South's largest social group, non-slaveholding whites, to the Southern cause.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Timothy Lockley (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Lockley, T J
(2009)
Children Bound to Labor: The Pauper Apprentice System in Early America
Lockley, T J
(2013)
Women and Religion in the Atlantic Age - 1550-1900
| Description | The main findings of this research were that charitable activities in the southern USA before the Civil War developed a political end, aiming to foster white southern unity. Poorer whites were given a privilege purely based on race, and taught both formally and informally, to view the south as their 'home' that nurtured and cared for them. |
| Exploitation Route | Those involved in education or welfare policy might use this research to help inform their own ideas of race and welfare in the USA. |
| Sectors | Education |
| Description | The main impact of this research was academic, but there have been wider readers beyond academia, including those interested in welfare policy and welfare history. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2007 |
| Sector | Education |
| Impact Types | Policy & public services |