A Planter Family and the Challenges of the Nineteenth-Century South

Although bearing the title The Allstons of Chicora Wood, William Kauffman Scarborough's book focuses on the male members of the family. While that is perhaps to be expected given that the author's previous work focused on slave masters, it is unfortunate because many of the most compelling stories involve the female members of the Allston family. Scarborough himself seems to tacitly acknowledge that this is the case. In his introduction, he writes that the book began as a biography of Robert Allston before he enlarged it to a biography of the family. This shift remains evident in the book, as the subordinate Allstons of Chicora Wood are given less attention than is their due, a shortcoming rectified only slightly in the final chapters.

The patriarch of the fifth generation of Allstons, the protagonist in the work is Robert F. W. Allston. In many ways, Allston's career follows what we think of as the typical South Carolina planter-politician. Born into an elite family, educated in the North—in Allston's case, West Point—before returning home to take on the responsibilities he would bear for the remainder of his life, Allston's story is similar to other South Carolina elites studied by scholars, perhaps most notably Drew Gilpin Faust's James Henry Hammond and the Old South: A Design for Mastery (1982). Allston entered South Carolina's notoriously radical politics in the Nullification Era, siding with the Nullifiers in this period, as he would support the secessionists in both 1850 and 1860. From this beginning, Allston would serve in the South Carolina House and Senate for much of his adult life. Scarborough writes that Allston's "overriding concern was to promote unity within the state" (p. 19). He lost (to the aforementioned Hammond) in the gubernatorial contest of 1842. The setback, however, did little to dim Allston's political star, and he declined invitations to run for Congress in the late 1840s. He did participate in the Nashville Convention of 1850 and would eventually serve his state as governor from 1856 to 1858.

Allston's construction of a plantation empire receives parallel attention. Although here his career rightly endures greater scrutiny, as Scarborough attempts to offer a corrective to other scholars who have portrayed Allston as an "imperious master" (p. 42). One reason why Allston has received such attention is because of the depth of surviving sources about his plantation management and his personal and political affairs. A large selection of Allston's papers were edited and published by J. H. Easterby, and the voluminous Allston papers are available at the South Carolina Historical Society in Charleston. Despite these ample sources, little time is spent on the day-to-day lived experience of the protagonist, much less the other Allstons who resided at Chicora Wood.

Scarborough writes: "Allston displayed a patriarchal attitude toward both family and slaves, but among the total constellation of slaveholders the treatment of his bondspeople can be characterized more accurately as one of relative benevolence" (p. 43). Scarborough marshals evidence to support this viewpoint: the punishments and rewards that Allston used to motivate his slaves; the elaborate festivities for celebrating Christmas; the distribution of clothes and shoes; the use of physicians to treat both slave and free residents of the plantation; and his concern for the spiritual wellbeing of his slaves. Scarborough's purpose is twofold: to reassert the old planter-paternalism perspective, and to place Allston in the larger context of South Carolina slaveholders. But on the second point, the evidence is less than clear. While Allston may have sold few slaves—leading Scarborough to write "The greatest threat to slave families on the rice coast was not the fear of sale but the omnipresence of death [from disease]" (p. 50)—it seems likely that he did so less out of any concern for dividing families than because of the...