Slavery In Louisiana Research Articles

Sick Time: Medicine, Management, and Slavery in Louisiana and Cuba, 1763–1868

Capitalist ideas of productivity became central to medicine under slavery. They shaped how physicians treated enslaved patients, crafted a scientific basis for medicine, and conceived of themselves as professionals. Between the late-eighteenth-century and the mid-nineteenth-century, white male physicians in Louisiana and Cuba distinguished themselves from other healers: first, by aligning with Spanish colonialism, and then, by making themselves essential to a new form of plantation management that used clock-time discipline, hierarchical divisions of labor, and complex accounting systems. These technologies helped planters track the hours and days each enslaved person spent working, eating, sleeping, birthing, suffering from sickness and injuries, and recovering. This in turn enabled precise interpretations of enslaved health in terms of productivity, which was primarily measured in work time and the number of commodities produced. Physicians, who were seeking a rigorous intellectual foundation for medical knowledge production, latched onto planter methods of calculating and controlling enslaved health. One of those methods was what planters and physicians called “sick time,” which was an allotment of time away from work intended to manage illness enough for enslaved people to return to work. However, as physicians used plantation management to cast an air of scientific accuracy over their knowledge, enslaved people reconfigured their own medical practices to make themselves less visible and countable. Fugitive practices involving trees, animals, and natural springs helped enslaved people to heal by taking their own forms of sick time.

An Intimate Economy: Enslaved Women, Work, and America's Domestic Slave Trade

In An Intimate Economy: Enslaved Women, Work, and America's Domestic Slave Trade, Alexandra J. Finley reconstructs the connections between the domestic, economic, and sexual labor that enslaved women performed in the making of the domestic slave trade in the antebellum American South. Finley uncovers the experiences of a small group of enslaved women to explore how bondswomen's work propelled the economy of slavery at the height of the internal slave trade. In a journey that starts in Richmond, Virginia, and weaves through the cotton South to New Orleans, Louisiana, Finley delves into the ineluctable relationship between the domestic slave trade and enslaved women's labor, illuminating the complexities of Black women's lives as concubines, seamstresses, housekeepers, and maids. She argues that it was enslaved women who completed the essential work that kept slave traders wealthy and kept the slave trade functioning through the antebellum and Civil War eras. Through deploying the concepts of the sexual, domestic, and reproductive economies of slavery, Finley unpacks how enslaved women's domestic labor was hidden in plain sight and how their work enriched the men who owned and partnered with them.One of Finley's strengths in An Intimate Economy is her adeptness at uniting the personal stories of women who have historically been difficult to locate in the archive. Utilizing feminist and legal theories of the sexual economy, Finley traces the tethers of enslaved women's lives and does so without losing sight of their extraordinary and difficult circumstances. In each chapter, Finley shows that enslaved women experiences were entangled with white men who became rich during the spree for enslaved labor in the nineteenth century. These women made difficult choices about their survival—and the survival of their children—within slaveholding societies where enslavers valued them based on their gender, skills, color, and contributions to the domestic economy.Finley begins with Corinna Hinton, or Corinna Omohundro, an enslaved woman who lived in Richmond, Virginia, as the enslaved mistress, housekeeper, and partner of Richmond slave trader Silas Omohundro. To understand Hinton's proximity to Omohundro, Finley poses a provocative question: Is it possible to understand the relationship between Silas Omohundro and Corinna Hinton “in the absence of legal consent and personhood?” (p. 31). In other words, can we understand Corinna Hinton on her own terms, outside of her relationship with Omohundro? According to Finley, we can. Corinna Hinton made strategic choices for herself and her children, while living and working with Omohundro as his wife and the manager of his domestic affairs. Even if enslaved women such as Hinton were trafficked in the “fancy trade” and sold into sexual slavery, they found ways to carve out spaces for themselves to survive the traumas of slavery and the challenges of concubinage.Moreover, Finley explores how the domestic economy of slavery shaped enslaved women's lives in important ways. Drawing attention to the enslaved seamstresses who worked for Richmond slave trader Hector Davis, Finley shows how enslaved women sewed the clothing that enslaved people wore on the auction block. The enslavers that Finley highlights increasingly relied on enslaved women to make the clothing for the enslaved people being sold to support their profits from slavery.Throughout An Intimate Economy, Finley tracks the connections between enslaved women, their enslavers, and the legality of enslavers’ property rights over their enslaved concubines and partners. She approaches the intersections of sexual violence, agency, and resistance with a nuance that underlies her understanding of the complexities of enslaved women's lives. Sarah Ann Conner and Lucy Ann Cheatham are examples. Conner was the enslaved concubine of Theophilus Freeman, the New Orleans slave trader who sold Solomon Northup into slavery in Louisiana. In examining Conner's life, Finley stays attuned to the ways in which enslaved women made choices about how to survive the violence and unpredictability of slavery. Lucy Ann Cheatham was enslaved in Richmond and New Orleans, serving as a housekeeper and the partner for her enslaver. For Conner and Cheatham, their roles within the domestic sphere of their enslavers reveal the convergence of the sexual and domestic economies of slavery in antebellum America.Ultimately, Finley shows how enslaved women's sexual labor was both visible and veiled. In an analysis that shows the increased contributions of enslaved women to the economy of slavery in the antebellum era, Finley deftly restores enslaved women to the center of the domestic slave trade in America. She reminds us of the value of women's work in nineteenth-century America, never losing sight of the extractive nature of American slavery and American capitalism. Although the contributions of enslaved women were often hidden, Finley convincingly shows that the sexual economy of slavery for enslaved women was subsumed under the umbrella of domestic labor.

From a Slave to a Surgeon: David Kearney McDonogh, the First Black Otolaryngologist.

David McDonogh, born into chattel slavery in Louisiana in the early 1800s, accomplished the unfathomable by becoming the first Black otolaryngologist in the United States of America. With tireless determination and profound intellect, Dr McDonogh surmounted immeasurable adversity along his improbable journey to freedom and success as an eye, ear, nose, and throat doctor in New York. His doctorate in medicine was posthumously awarded to his great-great-granddaughter in 2018 by the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. In this History of Otolaryngology piece, we share his extraordinary story.

Du Baptême à la Tombe: Afro-Catholicisme et Réseaux Familiaux dans les Communautés Esclaves Louisianaises (From baptism to the grave: Afro-Catholicism and family network in Louisiana slave communities)

In Du Baptême à la Tombe Geneviève Piché explores Louisiana, unique in its French, Spanish, and American heritages, and the challenging subject of African Catholicism in slave communities in the early American period (1803–1845). She uses church documents, comparing the urban New Orleans Parish with the rural Saint John the Baptist Parish, but also published sources, travel literature, directories, and registers, in English but mostly in French. Her theoretical stand includes slave agency and cultural negotiation, macrohistory and microhistory, history from below, and the search for the excluded. It also includes female protagonists, and discussions of creolization, hybridity, transculturation, and multicultural processes. She views religiosity as a key socializing practice, including for the subaltern, and considers plurality important in society and in historical interpretation. In local and global approaches, she stresses how slavery in Louisiana has an Atlantic context (American, Iberian, Caribbean, African, and Latin American). Piché deals first with the life of urban slaves in the New Orleans parish, including demographics and stressing a heterogeneous servile population, with the preponderance of female slaves as domestics and merchants. Leisure and amusement play important roles in slave urban life, most of it in tandem with religiosity, officially Catholic yet mixed with African mores. She then turns to the countryside of the Saint John the Baptist Parish, emphasizing the prevalence of males, the growing U.S.-born slave population's use of English, and Protestant features opposed by French Catholic missionary zeal. As most slaves were Catholics, she deals at length with the Church and the slaves in Louisiana. Slaves were active agents in Catholic practice; women, in particular, and some within the clergy opposed slavery. The Church was split and the clergy itself owned slaves. Catholic slave owners often opposed conversion. In any case, most slaves were Catholics, and Sunday was a resting day; priests opposed family split, as the thorny issue of marriage led to common slave church unions. Free black women volunteered to spread the Catholic faith. Piché concludes that voluntary adherence to Catholicism comforted the material and spiritual lives of slaves and free blacks. Even if that is impossible to prove, her arguments are convincing and contribute to understanding the past as inspiring, as even the most destitute can forge their own destinies.

Counterfeit Justice: The Judicial Odyssey of Texas Freedwoman Azeline Hearne (review)

Reviewed by: Counterfeit Justice: The Judicial Odyssey of Texas Freedwoman Azeline Hearne Sean Kelley Counterfeit Justice: The Judicial Odyssey of Texas Freedwoman Azeline Hearne. By Dale Baum. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009. Pp. 326. Maps, notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 9780807134054, $45.00 cloth.) Former slaves in Texas, as in almost all post-emancipation societies, saw ownership of land as the foundation for a meaningful freedom. Dale Baum's CounterfeitJustice contributes to historians' ongoing examination of the post-Civil War U.S. South, highlighting the role of the law in defining the economic status of former slaves. The book tells the story of one freedwoman's effort to hold onto a plantation [End Page 101] which, had she been white, would probably have become hers with a minimal amount of legal fuss. Azeline Hearne was born into slavery in Louisiana in 1825. In 1853, she and her master, Sam Hearne, came to Robertson County, Texas, then a fast-developing plantation region on the middle Brazos River. Despite Azeline's race and slave status, she and Sam Hearne seem to have lived as husband and wife. The inner workings of their relationship are lost to history, but the couple did have a son named Dock. When Sam Hearne was on his deathbed in the fall of 1866, he made out a will leaving his 903-acre plantation to Dock, who was at the time still a minor. The will also contained provisions for Azeline's maintenance. Although the will was drafted and Same Hearne died after the Civil Rights Act of 1866 granted citizenship to former slaves (and therefore made them eligible to hold property and litigate on their own behalf) Sam Hearne apparently anticipated that relatives would contest his will. Sam thus went to great lengths to make sure his wishes were respected. Gravely ill, he journeyed to the county seat to have the will witnessed and he appointed a well-respected white physician to be his executor. He died two months later in November 1866. The rest of Azeline Hearne's story is a tragic, yet predictable tale of the legal obstacles faced by freedpeople in the aftermath of slavery. The story is also immensely complicated, a veritable tangle of legal maneuvers and counter maneuvers that resulted when Sam Hearne's white relatives contested his will. Dock died during the yellow fever epidemic of 1867, just after reaching the age of majority. Under the terms of the will, the property went directly over to Azeline. Complicating matters were various debts and encumbrances, as well as an old land claim dating to the Mexican era. Illiterate and lacking any legal training whatsoever, Azeline was forced to hire a parade of attorneys, some of whom were incompetent, while others worked actively to defraud her of her inheritance. Because Dock and Azeline were freedpeople, the Freedmen's Bureau took over the adjudication of the estate for a time, with the heirs' legal fortunes fluctuating with the frequent changes at the Robertson County Bureau. The estate was not settled until 1884, when Azeline's lawsuit against her former attorney, Harvey D. Prendergast (in which she was represented by onetime Greenback Party gubernatorial candidate W. H. Hamman) was dismissed on a technicality. Deprived of her inheritance, Azeline drifted into obscurity and probably died in the 1890s. Azeline Hearne left scant trace in the documentary record, and much about her life remains obscure. Her story emerges almost entirely in court records, with Freedman's Bureau and other documents contributing essential detail. Anyone who has worked with probate and property records will appreciate the tremendous work Baum has done in piecing together the story and making obscure points of law understandable. The book also does a fine job of interweaving the history of Reconstruction in Texas and Robertson County with a narrative of the legal maneuverings; indeed, the two histories intersect at numerous points. Most significantly, in telling Azeline Hearne's story, Baum reveals the formidable legal barriers to black equality in nineteenth-century Texas. [End Page 102] Sean Kelley Hartwick College (Oneonta, New York) Copyright © 2010 The Texas State Historical Association

Creole Crossings: Domestic Fiction and the Reform of Colonial Slavery by Carolyn Vellenga Berman

MLR, I02.4, 2007 1127 hegemony may be under threat.There aremoments when Mignolo's prose becomes a trifleconvoluted, and thenon-academic readermay struggle occasionally to followhis arguments. None the less, in the current context ofUS politics, to advocate a diverse, multilingual world inwhich differentworld-views and cultures can coexist side by side inmutual respect, differentbut coeval, may be more than a little idealistic, but it is remarkably courageous aswell. KING'S COLLEGE LONDON SUSAN CASTILLO Creole Crossings: Domestic Fiction and theReform ofColonial Slavery. By CAROLYN VELLENGA BERMAN. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press. 2oo6. xi+240 pp. $39.95; ?2I.50. ISBN 978-0-80I4-4384--8. Inmany ways, the term 'Creole' is the sitewhere theunstable dark side of themaster narratives we have inherited from the earlymodern period and theEnlightenment colonialism, race, slavery,nationhood, thepublic and private spheres-is most starkly cast into relief.This radical instability calls intoquestion many of the seemingly fixed categories which, even today,govern our world. In Creole Crossings Carolyn Vellenga Berman has chosen to trace the convergence of discourses related to colonial and domestic reform in the fiction and politics of the anti-slavery movement. In doing so, she has provided a fascinating analysis of theways inwhich many eighteenth and nineteenth-century domestic fictional narratives,with their foregrounding of is sues linked to race, slavery, and abolition, are destabilized by the figureof theCreole woman. Berman begins by offering an overview of the etymology of the term 'Creole' and theways inwhich ithas evolved in French and inBritish and American English, illustrating its slipperiness and radical ambiguity. This is followed by a brief study of characterizations of Creoles in several novels, such as Helena Wells's Constantia Neville; or, The West Indian (i 8oo), Gustave de Beaumont's Marie, ou l'esclavage aux Etats- Unis (i 83 5), Walt Whitman's Franklin Evans (i 842), and Eugene Sue's Les Mysteres deParis (1843). This is followed by a chapter on Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Paul et Virginie,which according toBerman not only situatesmiddle-class domesti city in a colonial landscape, but also probes the linksbetween issues linked toCreole identity (coloniality, slavery, and education) and conceptions of nationhood. After this,Berman goes on to look at Creole characters and the roles they play innovels written and published during the early years of European abolitionist movements, which, however, concern themselves with women's rights rather thanwith slavery. The following two chapters illustrate, as Berman states, 'how the Creole figure served to emphasize this nexus between family practices and the (racial) qualifica tions fornational belonging in the laterperiod of slavery reform' (p. 24). She analyses Charlotte Bronte's linkage inyane Eyre of thediscourses onmadness and on theCre ole, inwhich theCreole figureofBertha becomes a synecdoche related to colonial and domestic reform, and situates her reading within the context of existing debates on emancipation, parliamentary reform, the status of governesses, penal systemswithin the colonies, and the treatment given to thementally ill.Chapter 5 is probably the strongest in the book, with its study of representations of domestic space (domestic inboth the familial and the national sense) in anti-slavery writing by theAmerican authors Harriet Beecher Stowe and Harriet Jacobs. As Berman points out, Stowe in Uncle Tom's Cabin contests the institution of slavery by representing French colonial notions of the family that call into question rigidAnglo-American racial categories, as in the figureof the quadroon Cassy, who escapes from slavery inLouisiana. None the less, she observes, Stowe by championing maternal over paternal custody of chil dren ultimately repudiates the French model inorder to reinscribeAnglo-American I I28 Reviews familial norms. Harriet Jacobs, on the other hand, is seen by Berman as reclaiming theCreole inheritance rejected by Stowe when she envisions 'an alternative Ameri can nation modelled on the family consisting of her fatherlessmulatto children and herself' (pp. 24-25). In thisperspective, theCreole linkage between female education and social reproduction is later transmuted into (and contained within) the issue of redefining family,race, and nation in theperiod of emancipation. The book concludes with an examination ofCreole politics in JeanRhys's Wide Sargasso Sea (I966). In Creole Crossings Berman has addressed not one but several extraordinarily com plex issues...

Mr. Jefferson's Lost Cause: Land, Farmers, Slavery, and the Louisiana Purchase

Mr. Jefferson's Lost Cause: Land, Farmers, Slavery, and Louisiana Purchase. By Roger G. Kennedy. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. xiii, 350. Chronology, illustrations. Cloth, $30.00.)Mr. Jefferson's Lost Cause shares both strengths and weaknesses of Roger G. Kennedy's other forays into history of early republic-Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson: A Study In Character (2000), Hidden Cities: The Discovery and Loss of Ancient North American Civilization (1994); and Orders from France: The Americans and French in a Revolutionary World (1990). A swirl of environmental, intellectual, political, diplomatic, business, and social history, Mr. Jefferson's Lost Cause is written in a style that is unmistakably Kennedy's own. Intended for both a popular and an academic audience, it will probably intrigue and infuriate each in its own way.What Kennedy does especially well in this book, as in all of his books, is to revisit a familiar story with an eye to hitherto unseen connections and forgotten characters. Accordingly, this book is as much about Creek nationalism, American expansionism, and British mercantilism as its ostensible topic: spread of plantation slavery and cotton agriculture across American South. Kennedy develops often-unexpected linkages between these-and other-developments, creating a rich web of stories. And he finds individuals who personify these linkages. may receive top-billing in this book, but Kennedy devotes nearly as much attention to self-proclaimed Creek chief Alexander McGillivray, powerful Indian trader William Panton, and minor American diplomat Fulwar Skipwith.But this book also suffers from same shortcomings as its predecessors. The organization is idiosyncratic, with author generally providing little advance warning of its many twists and turns. The citations are to what Kennedy describes, with joyous disdain for standard scholarly practice, as the most accessible source-generally partial quotations reproduced in monographs and articles rather than complete documents in microfilmed or published collections (307). As a result, many of his quotes lack context that would help to explain them. The book also is rife with basic factual errors. Kennedy discusses end of slavery in Delaware as something that occurred at turn of nineteenth century (54), refers to Federalist domination of Congress in 1783 (65), and suggests that was angling for presidency in 1785 (75). And, even though all of his quotes on subject come from early 1804, Kennedy dates Hillhouse debates over slavery in Louisiana to 1805-06 (210-13). Most distressingly, Mr. Jefferson's Lost Cause displays Kennedy's tendency to dismiss any evidence that contradicts his own view. The moralizing is heavy-handed, and any mitigating circumstances that rescue its targets from opprobrium are either heavily discounted or entirely ignored.Kennedy directs his anger at Jefferson, blaming him for spread of slavery and, ultimately, for Civil War. According to Kennedy, the most important choices made by any single statesman for future of South arose from preferences, prejudices, and policies of Thomas Jefferson (236). Different outcomes in various contests over expansion of slavery in opening decades of nineteenth century, he argues, might have . …

Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763-1803. By Gilbert C. Din. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999. Pp. 356. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. $50.00 cloth.

Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763-1803. By Gilbert C. Din. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999. Pp. 356. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. $50.00 cloth. - Volume 59 Issue 2

Reviews of Books:Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763-1803 Gilbert C. Din

Reviews of Books:Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763-1803 Gilbert C. Din

Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763-1803. By Gilbert C. Din (College Station, Texas A&M University Press, 1999) 356 pp. $49.95

<i>Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763-1803</i>. By Gilbert C. Din (College Station, Texas A&amp;M University Press, 1999) 356 pp. $49.95

Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763-1803

Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763-1803

Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763-1803

Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763-1803

The Origins of American Slavery: Freedom and Bondage in the English Colonies , and: Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763-1803 (review)

Gilbert B. Din. Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763-1803 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999). Pp. xiv + 356. $49.95 cloth.

Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763-1803

Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763-1803

Spaniards, planters, and slaves: the Spanish regulation of slavery in Louisiana, 1763-1803

Spaniards, planters, and slaves: the Spanish regulation of slavery in Louisiana, 1763-1803

Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763-1803

Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763-1803. Gilbert C. Din. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999. Pp. xiv, 356. $49.95.) The Trial of Don Pedro Leon Lujan: The Attack Against Indian Slavery and Mexican Traders in Utah. Sondra Jones. (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2000. Pp. vii, 182. illustrations, maps. $27.50.) Recovering the hidden world of the enslaved is difficult enough without having to do it in three languages. Perhaps for that reason alone, scholars of the African-American past have tended to shy away from colonial Louisiana or the territorial Southwest. Gilbert C. Din, professor emeritus at Fort Lewis College and the author of numerous studies of the early gulf South, knows his terrain and has written what will undoubtedly be regarded as the standard institutional study of unfree labor in pre-1803 Louisiana. Somewhat less successfully, Sondra Jones explores the peculiar world of African slavery and the trade in Native-American children in the lands west of Texas. Din writes with a number of goals in mind, all of which are admirably and explicitly established early on, and most of which are accomplished. Specifically, he suggests that the now tattered Tannenbaum thesis-the theory that Spanish statutes and Catholic teachings rendered slavery less brutal in Madrid's American empire than in colonies controlled by Britain or France-pays far too much attention to legal theory and far too little notice to the indifference with which Rome actually regarded the material condition of life for enslaved Africans. Although church officials admittedly demanded physical as as spiritual care of bondpeople in parts of Spanish America, they rarely did so in Louisiana and appeared content to accept conditions as they found them when King Carlos III obtained the territory from France in 1763. On the question of slave marriage, for example, most priests chose not to challenge the power of the planter class, who enjoyed the legal right to deny this sacrament to their bondpeople. More tellingly, even when permission was obtained, the clergy understood that they would not be paid for their labors and so reluctant to proffer their services on this and other church sacraments as well (129). Yet Din is equally impatient with the conventional wisdom that slavery in Spanish Louisiana differed little from the institution that existed during the decades of French control. Within three short years, Governor Antonio de Ulloa altered practices dating from the French Code Noir of 1724 (which itself was adapted from a similar code of 1685 for the French West Indies). When French Creoles balked at his modest reforms, Spanish authorities announced that henceforth the statutes of Castile and the Indies were to govern the colony. The author is equally precise in what he does not cover. He observes that because scholars have discussed free blacks and mulattoes, he sees little reason to do so here (although that assertion does not prohibit him from repeatedly citing the voluminous and influential writings of the late Kimberly S. Hanger). Neither does Din have a great deal to say about slave culture or religion-a term wholly absent from his index-except to disagree with Gwendolyn Midlo Hall on a number of critical points. Because of his determination to focus on governors and regulations, or in words, the world the slaveholders made, Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves has a curiously antiquated feel to it. …

Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763-1803

Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves is a provocative look at the institution of slavery and its function as a part of Louisiana's culture during the years of Spanish rule. Gilbert C. Din challenges the idea that conditions under the Spaniards differed little from the years of French rule and examines how local culture merged with colonial government and residual laws to create a slave system unlike any other in the Deep South. Din presents many aspects of the slavery issue, including a look at the French system, conflicts between planters who favored the established system and governors who promoted the less stringent Spanish laws, and the political favoritism that sought to benefit the wealthy New Orleans district. Din also discusses the role of the Catholic Church. Using government documents from archives in Spain and Louisiana, Din paints a historically accurate portrait of a time when the blended culture of the eighteenth-century colony resulted in conflict and turmoil. Most important are the PapelesProcedentes de la Isla de Cuba, a collection of colonial documents which illustrate not only the actions but also the personalities of the governors and how they implemented changes and handled problems within the slave system. Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves is the first in its field to capture the years of Spanish rule as a specific and unique point in Louisiana's history of slavery. Din's research uncovers both the complexities of the slavery issue and the Spanish heritage that ultimately helped to shape the slave system of the future state. It is an ideal study for anyone interested in the history of both colonial Louisiana and slavery itself.

Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763-1803

Spaniards, Planters, and Slaves: The Spanish Regulation of Slavery in Louisiana, 1763-1803

Richard Taylor: Soldier Prince of Dixie (review)

l64CIVIL WAR HISTORY Tucker writes with great sympathy and passion for his subject. One wonders if he did not fall into the trap that biographers often do, whereby they become so captivated by their subjects that they lose objectivity. Did Bannon have no warts? Did he ever err in judgment? What were his views on slavery? These are small matters, however. Tucker's is a moving account of a story that needed to be told. Both of these books add to the increasing awareness of the religious dimensions of the Civil War, most especially of the part played by Catholics. Both books are a further reminder that when each side is convinced that its cause is God's cause, there is little room and not much desire for compromise and amicable solutions. Cultural tunnel-vision and ardent nationalism mixed with religious passion is a sure recipe for intolerance, violence, and unthinking bravado. David B . Chesebrough Illinois State University Richard Taylor: Soldier Prince ofDixie. By T. Michael Parrish. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992. Pp. xiv, 553. $34.95.) Richard Taylor is well known to many students of the Middle Period for his valuable memoir, Destruction and Reconstruction: Reminiscences ofthe Late War (1879). Others may recall that Taylor, a Louisiana sugar planter given to the high life, was the son of President Zachary Taylor and rose to be one of the Confederacy's seventeen lieutenant generals in the Civil War, one of three officers to reach that rank without having gone to the U.S. Military Academy—the other two non-West Pointers were Wade Hampton of South Carolina and Nathan Bedford Forrest of Tennessee. Taylor has been the subject of several scholarly articles or essays as well as a primary or secondary figure in other books about the campaigns of the Civil War. Now T. Michael Parrish offers this thorough, descriptive, and analytical biography, one based on his Ph.D. dissertation completed at the University of Texas at Austin. Parrish has conducted exemplary research in numerous archives across the nation and investigated all phases of Taylor's life. The author has done a fine job in presenting a rounded picture of Taylor's antebellum and postbellum years in addition to a detailed treatment ofhis wartime service. Indeed, readers are cautioned not to neglect the first three chapters, which reveal much about the antebellum South and Louisiana in particular. Parrish is especially good on defining the importance of slavery in Louisiana's society and economy . That assessment dovetails with Taylor's role as a pro-secessionist at his state's secession convention, where he served as chair of the committee on military and naval affairs. Taylor held a longstanding interest in military matters but no prewar military rank. He exerted influence through his position as state senator and owner of one of Louisiana's largest sugar plantations. Parrish documents Taylor's precarious personal finances, elegant social life, BOOK REVIEWS165 and useful family relationships, such as being the brother-in-law of Jefferson Davis. These interconnections probably preordained Taylor to gain some sort of state or Confederate military appointment, but in contrast to more prominent Southern political leaders such as Howell Cobb, Louis T. Wigfall, and Robert Toombs, Taylor turned out to have real tactical talent and merited field command in combat, as Parrish shows. A drawback, however, was Taylor's health. Parrish demonstrates that in several instances, due to chronic rheumatoid arthritis, Taylor was unable to exercise the responsibilities of his rank. The malady also had been troublesome to the general before the war, requiring time away from his plantation and special regimens and treatments. The heart of the book is Parrish's excellent portrait of Taylor as a general, from neophyte in the East to experienced campaigner in the West. Starting as an unpaid civilian adviser to Gen. Braxton Bragg in Pensacola, Florida, Taylor was elected colonel of the 9th Louisiana infantry regiment. Although he saw no combat early in the war, Taylor was promoted over the heads of senior officers to brigadier and command of the Louisiana brigade. This assignment caused tongues to wag about Taylor's family connections to President Davis. Nevertheless, Taylor went on to...

Negro Slavery in Louisiana (review)

Negro Slavery in Louisiana (review)