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Mr. Landrum deftly captures the key political developments in Spartanburg County for the century following the Revolution. Special chapters are also devoted to the issues of religion, temperance, education, and, of course, secession. Landrum's real concern, however, is with the people of Spartanburg County; indeed the final 500 pages of the book are devoted to biographical and genealogical sketches of its families and luminaries.
From the eighteenth century to the eve of the Civil War, Georgia's racial order shifted from the somewhat fluid conception of race prevalent in the colonial era to the harsher understanding of racial difference prevalent in the antebellum era. In Cultivating Race: The Expansion of Slavery in Georgia, 1750–1860, Watson W. Jennison explores the centrality of race in the development of Georgia, arguing that long-term structural and demographic changes account for this transformation. Jennison traces the rise of rice cultivation and the plantation complex in low country Georgia in the mid-eighteenth century and charts the spread of slavery into the up country in the decades that followed. Cultivating Race examines the "cultivation" of race on two levels: race as a concept and reality that was created, and race as a distinct social order that emerged because of the specifics of crop cultivation. Using a variety of primary documents including newspapers, diaries, correspondence, and plantation records, Jennison offers an in-depth examination of the evolution of racism and racial ideology in the lower South.
In the decades before the Civil War, the small number of slaves who managed to escape bondage almost always made their way northward along the secret routes and safe havens known as the Underground Railroad. Offering a new perspective on this standard narrative, Matthew Clavin recovers the story of fugitive slaves who sought freedom by—paradoxically—sojourning deeper into the American South toward an unlikely destination: the small seaport of Pensacola, Florida. Geographically and culturally, across decades of rule by a succession of powers—Spain, Great Britain, and the United States—Pensacola occupied an isolated position on the margins of antebellum Southern society. Yet as neighbo...
First published in 1977, A History of Georgia has become the standard history of the state. Documenting events from the earliest discoveries by the Spanish to the rapid changes the state has undergone with the civil rights era, the book gives broad coverage to the state's social, political, economic, and cultural history. This work details Georgia's development from past to present, including the early Cherokee land disputes, the state's secession from the Union, cotton's reign, Reconstruction, the Bourbon era, the effects of the New Deal, Martin Luther King, Jr., the fall of the county-unit system, and Jimmy Carter's election to the presidency. Also noted are the often-overlooked contributi...
Old Petersburg and the Broad River Valley of Georgia details colonial life at Petersburg, Georgia, at the junction of Broad and Savannah Rivers. A town that grew, flourished, and eventually disappeared, Petersburg was once a valuable and unique outlet for river trade. This volume highlights various aspects of this river town, including its founding, politics, businesses, and religious practices. The Georgia Open History Library has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this collection, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Requiem for a Lost City shows us the reality of Civil War Atlanta from the eve of secession to the memorials for the fallen, through the memories of a participant. Sallie Clayton would have been the same age as the fictional Scarlett O'Hara during the Civil War. Sallie Clayton's memoirs, however, are not a work of fiction but bittersweet reminiscences of growing up in a doomed city in the midst of losing a war. Although her memoirs provide invaluable detail on Civil War Atlanta, they also tell of her personal experiences on a plantation in Montgomery, Alabama, and in postwar Augusta and Athens. Sallie Clayton belonged to one of Georgia's wealthiest and most prominent families. Her memoirs are colored by the losses suffered by her family. Robert Davis's introduction to this work illustrates the background of the Claytons, Sallie's writings, and Civil War Atlanta, providing a balanced account of life at "the crossroads of the Confederacy." The introduction also provides a corrective to the popular, Gone With the Wind view of Civil War Atlanta.
Starting in 1949, John W. Bonner Jr. compiled an annual annotated bibliography of books by Georgia writers for the Georgia Review. Published in 1966, this volume contains sixteen years of publications by native-born Georgian authors and authors who had lived in the state for at least five years. Books are listed by author, title, publisher, date, and price of the work. The annotations are descriptive rather than critical, intended to outline what type of material is contained in the books. A complete index by author is included.
For the first two months covered by this volume, Thomas Jefferson is residing at Monticello, avoiding the "rather sickly" season in the nation's capital. His mountaintop house finally has a roof and both daughters and their families come to stay with him. Using cowpox vaccine received from Benjamin Waterhouse, he undertakes what he calls "my experiment," the systematic inoculation of family members and slaves against the smallpox. In Washington, the construction of buildings for the nation's capital moves forward. The walls of the chamber of the House of Representatives now extend "up to the window heads," with only three feet more to go. Jefferson considers the erection of this chamber as w...