Slavery and the American South

by Jordan, Winthrop D.; Onuf, Peter S.; Oakes, James; Johnson, Walter; Gross, Ariela; Edwards, Laura F.

• ISBN13: 9781578065813
• ISBN10: 157806581X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-11-01
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Mississippi

Summary

In 1900 very few historians were exploring the institution of slavery in the South. But in the next half century, the culture of slavery became a dominating theme in Southern historiography. In the 1970s it was the subject of the first Chancellor's Symposium in Southern History held at the University of Mississippi. Since then, scholarly interest in slavery has proliferated ever more widely. In fact, the editor of this retrospective volume states that since the 1970s "the expansion has resulted in a corpus that has a huge number of components--scores, even hundreds, rather than mere dozens." He states that "no such gathering could possibly summarize all the changes of those twenty-five years." Hence, for the Chancellor Porter L. Fortune Symposium in Southern History in the year 2000, instead of providing historiographical summary, the participants were invited to formulate thoughts arising from their own special interests and experiences. Each paper was complemented by a learned, penetrating reaction. "On balance, " the editor avers in his introduction, "reflection about the whole can convey a further sense of the condition of this field of scholarship at the very end of the last century, which was surely an improvement over what prevailed at the beginning." The collection of papers includes the following: "Logic and Experience: Thomas Jefferson's Life in the Law" by Annette Gordon-Reed, with commentary by Peter S. Onuf; "The Peculiar Fate of the Bourgeois Critique of Slavery" by James Oakes, with commentary by Walter Johnson; "Reflections on Law, Culture, and Slavery" by Ariela Gross, with commentary by laura F. Edwards; "Rape in Black and White: Sexual Violence in the Testimony ofEnslaved and Free Americans" by Norrece T. Jones, Jr., with commentary by Jan Lewis; "The Long History of a Low Place: Slavery on the South Carolina Coast, 1670-1870" by Robert Olwell, with commentary by William Dusinberre; "Pa

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction	ix
ANNETTE GORDON-REED
Logic and Experience: Thomas Jefferson's Life in the Law	3	(26)
Commentary: Peter S. Onuf
JAMES OAKES
The Peculiar Fate of the Bourgeois Critique of Slavery	29	(28)
Commentary: Walter Johnson
ARIELA GROSS
Reflections on Law, Culture, and Slavery	57	(36)
Commentary: Laura F. Edwards
NORRECE T. JONES, JR
Rape in Black and White: Sexual Violence in the Testimony of Enslaved and Free Americans	93	(24)
Commentary: Jan Lewis
ROBERT OLWELL
The Long History of a Low Place: Slavery on the South Carolina Coast, 1670-1870	117	(30)
Commentary: William Dusinberre
STERLING STUCKEY
Paul Roteson and Richard Wright on the Arts and Slave Culture	147	(30)
Commentary: Roger D. Abrahams
Notes	177	(36)
Contributors	213	(2)
Index	215