Fear God and Walk Humbly

by Mallory, James; McWhiney, Grady; Moore, Warner O.; Pace, Robert F.; Moore, Warner O.; Pace, Robert F.

• ISBN13: 9780817308322
• ISBN10: 0817308326
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-03-01
• Publisher: Univ of Alabama Pr

Summary

James Mallory was an uncommon Southerner. Most inhabitants of the Old South, especially the plain folk, devoted more time to leisurely activities--drinking, gambling, hunting, fishing, and just loafing--than did Mallory, a workaholic agriculturalist, who experimented with new plants, orchards, and manures, as well as the latest farming equipment and techniques. A Whig and a Unionist, a temperance man and a peace lover, ambitious yet caring, business-minded and progressive, he supported railroad construction as well as formal education, even for girls. His cotton production--four bales per field hand in 1850, nearly twice the average for the best cotton lands in southern Alabama and Georgia--tells more about Mallory's steady work habits than about his class status. But his most obvious eccentricity--what gave him reason to be remembered--was that nearly every day from 1843 until his death in 1877, Mallory kept a detailed journal of local, national, and often foreign news, agricultural activities, the weather, and especially events involving his family, relatives, slaves, and neighbors in Talladega County, Alabama. Mallory's journal spans three major periods of the South's history--the boom years before the Civil War, the rise and collapse of the Confederacy, and the period of Reconstruction after the Civil War. He owned slaves and raised cotton, but Mallory was never more than a hardworking farmer, who described agriculture in poetical language as "the greatest [interest] of all."

Table of Contents

ILLUSTRATIONS	vii	(2)
PREFACE	ix	(4)
INTRODUCTION	xiii
1834-1842	1	(2)
1843	3	(8)
1844	11	(18)
1845	29	(15)
1846	44	(17)
1847	61	(20)
1848	81	(15)
1849	96	(18)
1850	114	(19)
1851	133	(20)
1852	153	(17)
1853	170	(17)
1854	187	(15)
1855	202	(14)
1856	216	(13)
1857	229	(11)
1858	240	(13)
1859	253	(13)
1860	266	(15)
1861	281	(17)
1862	298	(18)
1863	316	(15)
1864	331	(14)
1865	345	(11)
1866	356	(14)
1867	370	(13)
1868	383	(12)
1869	395	(10)
1870	405	(11)
1871	416	(11)
1872	427	(11)
1873	438	(12)
1874	450	(10)
1875	460	(10)
1876	470	(9)
1877	479	(6)
APPENDIX James Mallory's Last Will and Testament	485	(4)
NOTES	489	(170)
INDEX	659