Tumult and Silence at Second Creek: An Inquiry into a Civil War Slave Conspiracy.

In Tumult and Silence at Second Creek, Winthrop D. Jordan examines a little-known slave rebellion which occurred in Mississippi during the Civil War. No doubt eagerly anticipated by fans of his earlier work, including the classic White Over Black, this volume is something of a disappointment. This is partly a matter of scope. While his earlier award-winning book covered the development of racism in America from 1550 to 1812, this more narrowly focused work looks at a single incident.

The book describes the discovery of an 1861 conspiracy on the part of slaves from several plantations in Adams County, Mississippi, to take their freedom forcibly by killing their masters. At least nineteen slaves were examined by a "vigilance committee" comprised of white landowners. It is known that at least twenty-seven slaves were ultimately hanged for their participation in the scheme. The record of their pseudo-trial, kept by local planter Lemuel Connor, provides most of the details of the slaves' activities and plans. After handling the incident themselves, local whites united in silence to put the frightening episode behind them.

This is what made researching the Second Creek rebellion so challenging: the paucity of evidence. While one must admire Jordan's effort to uncover the whole story, ultimately the reader wonders if perhaps there simply wasn't enough information available. Although Jordan's detective work is skillful, all too often the stow needs to be filled in with supposition. The author's educated guesses are always plausible, and frequently insightful, but he stretches the limits of the existing documents.

Partly because of the need to fill in gaps and the desire to place the Second Creek Rebellion in time and space, Jordan's work is rich in background material. This is beautifully written; at his best, Jordan truly evokes the atmosphere of the antebellum South. And though he effectively sets the Mississippi counties central to the story into the broader context, scholars in the field will find much of this familiar indeed. Too often the reader is taken on lengthy tangential forays when a paragraph would have sufficed. As a result, the book loses its momentum when points, though interesting and relevant, are taken too far from the original narrative. For example, one of the more revealing items in the examination record is the apparent intention of some of the slave men to seize white women on the plantations for sexual purposes. This is what the white men listening to the statements found most terrifying; probably, male slaves viewed this as one of the best ways to seek vengeance upon their owners. While certainly important, the issue does not warrant a thirty-page chapter, much of which is comprised of general discussions of miscegenation (including the well-established point that white men, while fearing attacks upon "their" women by black men, were, in fact, themselves the worst perpetrators of interracial rape) and the attempt to identify specifically which rebels planned to assault which women. This interrupts the flow of the narrative, as does the author's practice of discussing the documents and his interpretation of them throughout the book. One feels that the author has been perhaps somewhat indulgent in treating us to the process of reconstructing the story, rather than simply relating the story itself.

The work may be most beneficial to graduate students who will get a real feel for antebellum southern life, and may also find Jordan's journey through historical sources intriguing and informative. The book contains no bibliography; the central documents appear in an appendix. This may be especially useful for students who are learning how to interpret historical documents. For those already versed in the practice of scholarly research, Jordan's efforts, while often impressive, can be laborious to follow. One doesn't so much read this book as study it while valiantly trying to hang onto the narrative thread. Although Tumult and Silence at Second Creek adds to our knowledge of slave rebellion, ultimately, despite the author's best attempt, it falls short of really telling the story of the Second Creek conspirators.

Carol Wilson Washington College