Them Dark Days Slavery in the American Rice Samps [Paperback]

Them Dark Days is a study of the callous, capitalistic nature of the vast rice plantations along the southeastern coast. It is essential reading for anyone whose view of slavery’s horrors might be softened by the current historical emphasis on slave community and family and slave autonomy and empowerment.

Looking at Gowrie and Butler Island plantations in Georgia and Chicora Wood in South Carolina, William Dusinberre considers a wide range of issues related to daily life and work there: health, economics, politics, dissidence, coercion, discipline, paternalism, and privilege. Based on overseers’ letters, slave testimonies, and plantation records, Them Dark Days offers a vivid reconstruction of slavery in action and casts a sharp new light on slave history.

One of the most ambitious and important studies on slavery to appear in recent years.

[A] vast and multifaceted new interpretation of slavery. Among his most impressive achievements is that he draws from these all-too-familiar sources so much that is fresh, provocative, and fully worthy of our attention. . . . Dusinberre's arguments are compelling.

[This book] will, I believe, take its place among the most important studies of southern slavery we have and are likely to get.

William Dusinberre has restored a tragic dimension to slave studies, and has done so with a thoroughness and persuasiveness that no future student of slavery will be able to ignore.

Dusinberre certainly knows how to tell a good story. And if some of his material proves to be familiar to lowcountry scholars, these specialists will nevertheless appreciate l³e