In this study of the South Carolina Low Country, the author explores the place of the yeomanry in plantation society - the complex web of domestic and public relations within which they were enmeshed, and the contradictory politics of slave society they turned to their advantage.

In this innovative study of the South Carolina Low Country, author Stephanie McCurry explores the place of yeomanry in plantation society--the complex web of domestic and public relations within which they were enmeshed, and the contradictory politics of slave society by which these small-holdings landowners achieved status from the region's powerful planters.

"Masters of Small Worlds is a strikingly original work, one which manages to say important new things about subjects that have attracted the attention of generations of scholars--the foundations of proslavery thought and the road to the Civil War. It is difficult to think of a work of American history that more successfully integrates the "public" and "private" realms of life, or that demonstrates more persuasively the centrality of gender as a category for understanding American political thought."--Eric Foner, Professor of History, Columbia University