Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil...
Thomas Jefferson condemned slavery but denied that whites and liberated blacks could live together in harmony. Jefferson’s young cousin Richa...
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reviews
Dec 11, 2008
Siria
rated it: 
This is a really wonderful microhistory of a small county in central Virginia where, in the early nineteenth century, a small group of freed slaves set up a community for themselves in a place they called Israel Hill. Ely does a great job of examining constructions of race and race relations in the antebellum south, challenging both our assumptions about the period and our complacency about race relations in our own time. Ely doesn't argue that slavery was anything less than a barbaric, horrific
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Sep 11, 2009
Cklinet
rated it:
Great book. Ely examines a community of freedmen living in 19th century Virginia. Rather than the strict observance of racial mores in a slavery society that one would expect, Ely finds instead an atmosphere of accomodation and co-existance. Rather than use this as an argument to minimize the brutality of slavery, Ely argues that this actually heightens the horror as it undermines the Southern protestation that they didn't regard African slaves as human.
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