Planting a Capitalist South: Masters, Merchants, and Manufacturers in the Southern Interior, 1790-1860

"This is a pathbreaking book, well grounded in the appropriate documentary record. Downey makes especially good use of the reports of the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company and of other corporations, which are so tedious to read, to offer an exciting and fresh perspective on an old problem of vital importance, the relationship between businessmen and planters in the Old South" -- American Historical Review
"Downey's book has many merits. First of all, it successfully presents a compr...