Description
Slavery was a complex institution that existed in many different places, at many different times. There will never be a final and complete portrait. The present volume collects some thirty documents, or groups of documents, that present the Southern “plantation ideal” recorded in manuals of slave management and pro-slavery tracts, several visitors to the coastal Georgia estates of the great planter James Hamilton Couper, the plain realities of less glamorous plantations revealed in letters from overseers and the dark side of slavery in the words of fugitive slaves.
Book Three in the Documentary History of Georgia series.
Neither More Nor Less Than Men, Slavery in Georgia, documentary history, Georgia, slavery, slave life, Mills Lane, letters, journals, Georgia history, Southern history, American history, African-American history, plantations, plantation life, planters, masters, slaves, blacks, whites, slave management, overseers, fugitive slaves, recollections, pro-slavery propaganda, abolitionists, Frederick Law Olmsted, travellers, history, slave auctions, John Brown, Fanny Kemble, Frances Anne Kemble, Emily Burke, Basil Hall, John Wesley, George Whitefield, Eli Whitney, cotton, cotton gin, rice, rice cultivation, slave traders, emancipation, Civil War, slave codes, An Inside View of Slavery, C.G. Parsons, underground railroad, Negro, Negroes, James Silk Buckingham, William Lloyd Garrison, Liberator, pro-slavery tracts, James Hamilton Couper, Sir Charles Lyell, Argyle Island, William Grimes, Oliver Sturges, Moses Roper, Charles Ball, Lewis W. Paine, Philo Tower, Pierce Butler, Panic of 1857, Georgia Historical Society
Eb J. Daniels –
An exceptional reader dealing with slavery in Georgia, Neither More Nor Less Than Men provides a genuine, engrossing accounting of the “peculiar institution” from multiple perspectives. Those seeking a well-rounded, holistic approach to slavery in Georgia will find no better starting point than this book.
Drawing from disparate sources ranging from manuals on plantation administration to escaped slave narratives to the accounts given to the Federal Writers Project in the 1930s, Neither More Nor Less Than Men seeks to establish as full a portrait of slavery as possible. As such, the editors have recognized that even offhand references to slaves and slavery found in accounts about the hanging of a slave or a letter from a foreign visitor to the South can provide details and assessments not found in explicit treatments of the subject. The breadth of perspectives is a key component of this work, and it is a major reason for its excellence.
Its excellence is also found in its constant focus on primary resources. Other than exceptional introductory passages by the editor, the sources are allowed to speak entirely for themselves. Too many modern treatments of slavery focus overly much on economic theory or lenses of inquiry, and thereby can’t see the trees for the forest; the concept of “slavery” overshadows the actual experiences and words of those who lived under and those who enforced the institution. Not so with this reader, which presents excellent summations of these important and valuable documents; as many of the readings are excerpted from larger works, Neither More Nor Less Than Men also functions as a sort of guide whereby one might locate other works of interest.
I would recommend Neither More Nor Less Than Men: Slavery in Georgia as essential reading for anyone interested in studying the history of slavery in the Deep South. It would also serve as an ideal introduction for those who are not very knowledgeable about this period of Georgia history but wish to start learning more. With the current dearth of understanding about slavery which besets most Americans, this book frankly ought to be mandatory reading for all.