James Huston

author of "The British Gentry, the Southern Planter, and the Northern Family Farmer: Agriculture and Sectional Antagonism in North America"

December 7, 2016

James L. Huston is a native of Illinois; he graduated from Denison University (B.A.) in 1969, and earned his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois in 1980. He was hired by the OSU Department of History in 1980 and has been here ever since. He has authored five books (one more now going through the editing process), and about 50 articles.

Two agricultural systems came over from England in 1600. One was the Puritan form of family farming, in which the farms were small (80-100 acres). The other was the aristocratic, estate farming done by the gentry and aristocracy; the holdings were vast, contained thousands of acres. Southerners adopted the estate system of agriculture in their plantations by substituting slaves for English farm workers; northerners adopted the family farm. The difference in farming in the two sections gave rise to different ideas about democracy, equality, and independence. The systems then clashed when territorial expansion raised the question of whether plantations would move west; northerners emphatically rejected the possibility, creating the Republican Party in response, and thus set off the collisions that led to secession and civil war.

URL: https://library.okstate.edu/news/celebratingbooks/2017-honorees-b/james-huston

Last Updated: 7 December 2016