Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 “The Most Honorable Besness in the Country”: Farm Operations at the Close of the Antebellum Era
- 2 “Honest Industry and Good Recompense”: Wealth Distribution and Economic Mobility on the Eve of the Civil War
- 3 “God Only Knows What Will Result from This War”: Wealth Patterns among White Farmers, 1860–1880
- 4 “Change and Uncertainty May Be Anticipated”: Freedmen and the Reorganization of Tennessee Agriculture
- 5 Agricultural Change to 1880
- Conclusion: One South or Many? Implications for the Nineteenth-century South
- Appendix A: Statistical Method and Sampling Technique
- Appendix B: Estimates of the Food Supply and the Extent of Self-sufficiency on Tennessee Farms
- Appendix C: Wholesale Price Data for Agricultural Commodities, 1859–1879
- Index
Appendix A: Statistical Method and Sampling Technique
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 “The Most Honorable Besness in the Country”: Farm Operations at the Close of the Antebellum Era
- 2 “Honest Industry and Good Recompense”: Wealth Distribution and Economic Mobility on the Eve of the Civil War
- 3 “God Only Knows What Will Result from This War”: Wealth Patterns among White Farmers, 1860–1880
- 4 “Change and Uncertainty May Be Anticipated”: Freedmen and the Reorganization of Tennessee Agriculture
- 5 Agricultural Change to 1880
- Conclusion: One South or Many? Implications for the Nineteenth-century South
- Appendix A: Statistical Method and Sampling Technique
- Appendix B: Estimates of the Food Supply and the Extent of Self-sufficiency on Tennessee Farms
- Appendix C: Wholesale Price Data for Agricultural Commodities, 1859–1879
- Index
Summary
Do not guess, try to count, and if you can not count admit that you are guessing.
The conclusions presented in this work rest upon an analysis of extensive statistical data drawn from the federal manuscript censuses for 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880. Although these censuses are indispensable tools for the economic and social historian, any scholar who has used them knows that they are potentially deceptive as well as insightful. To maximize their value, historians must use the quantitative evidence that they contain judiciously and with a constant awareness of their limitations – in the same manner, in other words, as they would approach any other form of historical artifact. This means applying rigorous standards both in the selection of evidence (sampling) and in its interpretation (statistical inference).
The data sets developed for this study fall into one of two basic categories. The statistics on wealth distribution presented in Chapters 2 and 3 are based on estimates of real and personal wealth recorded in the manuscript population censuses and include the entire population of white farm households for all eight sample counties. A farm household, as I have defined it, included any household in which one or more members reported a farm-related occupation to the census enumerator, whether planter, overseer, farmer, tenant, farm laborer, or farm hand.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- One South or Many?Plantation Belt and Upcountry in Civil War-Era Tennessee, pp. 196 - 202Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994