Inside the Natchez Trace Collection : New Sources for Southern History

by Adams, Katherine J.; Gould, Lewis L.

• ISBN13: 9780807123638
• ISBN10: 0807123633
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-07-01
• Publisher: Louisiana State Univ Pr

Summary

When it was acquired by the Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin in 1986, the Natchez Trace Collection was one of the great unexplored treasures of southern history. Its plantation records, bank correspondence, songbooks, and family letters, among many other gems, combine to form a cornucopia of the regions history. In this collection of essays, noted southern historians act as guides through this still largely untapped resource, describing its holdings on such topics as slavery, women's roles, the Old Southwest, Jacksonian politics, the sectional conflict, and the position of businessmen in the antebellum period. Designed to facilitate further scholarly exploration and use of this historical cache, Inside the Natchez Trace Collection does not exhaust the riches of the collection but rather illustrates its extraordinary research potential, proposing workable research topics and promising new lines of inquiry.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Don E. Carleton
Introduction	1	(8)
Lewis L. Gould
Windows on the Old Southwest	9	(25)
John D. W. Guice
Slavery in the Natchez Trace Collection	34	(24)
Randolph B. Campbell
Natchez District Women: Voices of Southern Women in the Natchez Trace Collection	58	(35)
Katherine J. Adams
Acquisitive Pursuits in a Slaveholding Society: Business History in the Natchez Trace Collection	93	(22)
Morton Rothstein
Reflections of Sectional Conflict in the Natchez Trace Collection	115	(31)
Shearer Davis Bowman
In Re Those ``Prebourgeois'' Planters: The Political Economy of Flush Times in Mississippi	146	(39)
William G. Shade
Appendix: Selected Subcollections of the Natchez Trace Collection	185	(12)
Notes on Contributors	197	(2)
Index	199