The book examines the yeomanry in the South Carolina Low Country before the Civil War. It focuses on the relationship between the yeomanry - the small farmers - and the planters, with whom they had strong ideological ties. The book deals with gender and class issues as well.

In this innovative study of the South Carolina Low Country, McCurry 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 by which that class of small farmers
extracted the privileges of masterhood from the region's powerful planters. Insisting on the centrality of women as historical actors and gender as a category of analysis, the book shows how the fateful political choices made by the lowcountry yeomanry were rooted in the politics of the household:
in the customary relations of power male heads of independent households assumed over their dependents, whether slaves or free women and children. Such masterly prerogatives, practiced in the domestic sphere and redeemed in the public, explain the yeomanry's deep commitment to slavery and
ultimately, their ardent embrace of secession. By placing the yeomanry in the center of the drama, McCurry offers a significant reinterpretation of this volatile society on the road to Civil War. Through careful and creative use of a wide variety of archival sources, she brings vividly to life the
small worlds of yeoman households, and the larger world of the South Carolina Low Country, the plantation South, and nineteenth-century America.

a work with unusual breadth of analysis ... in its sheer breadth of visiona nd attention to detail her analysis includes much that is fresh and original ... This, combined with a persuasively lucid and thoughtful written style, make this work a pleasure to read.