Slavery and Frontier Mississippi, 1720-1835.

Slavery and Frontier Mississippi, 1720-1835. By David J. Libby (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004. xvii plus 163 pp. $40.00).

If one had visited Natchez in the recent past, he would have found a relatively sleepy little town, almost a backwater, with lovely plantation homes and a pleasant waterfront but little hint that it was once the economic center of Mississippi. Riverboat gambling has restored a portion of its former aspect if not its former glory but the city is far from achieving its former prominence. Natchez is the focus of David Libby's story and from the time of Native American occupation, from one group of which it took its name, until the 1820s it had a preeminent place in the Mississippi Valley. Indeed, it dominated economically long after the 1820s while the political center of the region shifted northward. As is the welcome trend among slavery studies in recent years, Libby's is a story of evolution and he traces development of the "plantation society and economy established in eighteenth-century Natchez as it expanded further into the Natchez district, the Mississippi Territory, and ultimately the State of Mississippi" (p. xiii). He begins with Native Americans and stops at the point that most other studies begin, where slavery has reached its antebellum stage though even then it was not static.

The conflict of polities and cultures is one of the themes of the book and Libby does a good job of considering and not just mentioning pre-Columbian and African peoples as well as of course the Europeans--French, Spanish, English, and Americans--who claimed the region. Because of these contesting powers, Natchez remained a frontier for many years despite it fertile soil, political uncertainty, among other things, hampering its connection with the developing industrial world. Libby is at pains to sketch a society that aims toward capitalism and achieves success when, through cotton (and American political hegemony), it establishes firm ties with a growing Atlantic economy. He has no use for the concept of the South as a pre-modern, pre-capitalist, feudal, or seigneurial society (depending on how one uses the last term) and instead, following scholars such as Mark Smith and Joyce Chaplin, to mention only two who have significantly modified the idea that the South was totally out of step with the rest of the nation, sees Mississippi frontiersmen and planters as striving to be part of current business and scientific trends. He considers cotton to be peculiar in that, unlike other crops, it militated against maintenance of "a kind of premodern work culture that allowed slaves to preserve many aspects of their African heritage through their work" (p. 46). Here one could wish he were more specific as to how sugar, tobacco, and rice did so for while facts come to mind, it would be good to know his thinking along these lines. He even has problems with the concept of paternalism, at least as regards early Mississippi and separates the attitudes of Virginian John Steele, for example, from that of frontier Mississippi and while noting the limitations of Steele's concern for his slaves, or for one slave, considers his the values of "an old planter elite" (p. 38), values he says transformed in Mississippi. It is difficult to see any real transformation in Steele, however, because Libby does not provide enough information to support the argument. He notes at the outset that Steele's concern was mostly for a personal servant (which did not prevent him from separating the slave from his family) and that he was less concerned about his other slaves; setting up a new plantation in Mississippi may have been harder work than on a settled one in Virginia but there is little indication that Steele or any other planter, paternalist or otherwise, objected to working slaves hard. The circumstances but not Steele's values seem to have changed.

Perhaps Libby had in mind a contrast between Steele and William Dunbar, who revealed himself as a fierce and unfeeling taskmaster, but even he had patriarchal if not paternal attitudes.. Much of what Libby describes in Dunbar's case, however, illustrates the hardships under which slaves operated on the frontier--draining swamps and clearing fields of trees in order to make a plantation. Nor did inclement weather or cold temperatures bring surcease from labor. Running away into the wilderness, which slaves often did, was no guarantee of bettering one's situation though it might bring temporary respite. If he meant to contrast the two Libby might have supplied Steele's work regime; but still, swamps had to be drained and fields had to be cleared. Libby seems puzzled that Dunbar did not always punish runaways, though he sometimes did so harshly; yet an entirely inflexible regime would have encouraged full-scale rebellion and every successful planter knew when to give way.

Libby is very good in his description of the move from French to Spanish to English and to American rule and their consequences for the Natchez region, and in the transition from an exchange economy of hides, lumber, and other resources to the cultivation of tobacco, indigo, and finally cotton. He indicates that the economy of the region was closely tied to Louisiana and lends credence to the notion that many western settlers were prepared to swear allegiance to Spain in order to secure safe navigation of the Mississippi river with its outlet to the sea and overseas markets. There was little hint, in the 1770s anyway, of an English antipathy to the Spanish as planters "were more loyal to the market than to any nationality" (p. xv). Consequently, one could desire an elaboration of the reasons for an attempted uprising against Spain in 1781 while the region prospered under Spain's mercantilist protections.

Among important transformations in Mississippi's history was the creation in northern Mississippi of a society distinctive from that of the Natchez region and of a change in race relations before and after the assumed slave conspiracy of 1835. The arguments surrounding these events are largely convincing with the significant exception of whether a slave conspiracy actually existed. It has become increasingly common in some circles nowadays to deny the existence of slave conspiracies (Denmark Vesey comes to mind) even to cast doubt on such concrete events as the Stono Rebellion, and there is no intention here to be part of that trend. Yet Libby offers little evidence except the coerced testimony of slaves, and apparently the whip was liberally and brutally applied. If he can "visualize ... initially defiant men reduced to quivering masses, begging for mercy and promising to tell the inquisitor whatever he wanted to hear" (p. 111), how can he be sure the planned insurrection was not more in the minds of white men than slaves; particularly when he proceeds his narration by the fantasy of John Murrell? And if some slaves actually talked of rebellion does that constitute a plan rather than their own fantasies? One can be happy to admit the conspiracy's existence without being convinced Libby has made the case.

This is a small book on a large subject, and Libby has done more in 160 pages to open up the history of slavery in Mississippi than ever before. He engages the literature on African American culture as well as slavery, takes Native Americans more seriously than many others, treats the slave trade as well as national and local politics and makes temporal as well as geographical distinctions in Mississippi's development. He understands the nature of the crops he discusses and he provides acute sketches of whites immigrating to the region to enliven and illustrate the narration. While one can object to some of his assertions, the greatest objection for this reviewer is that he did not say more. In almost every case where an objection has been raised, it could have been clarified by elaboration; this might not have eliminated disagreement but would have made a solid story a richer one. But that is for another book. This one has significantly augmented the story of slavery in Mississippi.

Daniel C. Littlefield

University of South Carolina