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. "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