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Acknowledgments Over the many years of working on this project, I have compiled a long list of people and organizations to whom I owe thanks. I could not have produced this book without all of their help—I am grateful beyond words for all of the assistance, love, and support they provided and doubt that their acknowledgment here truly repays them for their help. I was blessed with two professors who were academic mentors of the highest order: Reginald D. Butler and Michael P. Johnson. I hope my book in some small way lives up to their great expectations. The kernel of inspiration for this project grew out of some classes I took as an undergraduate at the University of Virginia with Reginald D. Butler. His patient guidance, high standards, and trenchant criticisms changed the direction of my scholarly interests and prepared me for graduate school. I cannot thank him enough both for that start years ago and for his continuing advice long after I had left UVA. Michael P. Johnson changed my life the day he called and invited me personally to come to The Johns Hopkins University to work with him as a graduate student. Ever since, I have been lucky to count him as a mentor and friend. While I was in graduate school, every meeting I had with him tore down and quietly helped reshape my scholarship but somehow sent me out the door feeling better and more confident. He has remained to this day a ceaseless supporter of my research and my professional ambitions and a model for how to treat students. In addition to a debt of gratitude for all that, I probably also owe him several meals out, preferably for ribs and beer. At Hopkins, Ronald Walters’s guidance and assistance—both in Baltimore and since—make me glad to be a historian. Philip Morgan, Toby Ditz, x Acknowledgments Jane Dailey, and Jack Greene all deserve a huge thank you for their criticism and scholarly advice about my research. Outside of Baltimore, a number of other scholars offered excellent commentary and questions about parts of this project:Melvyn P. Ely, Peter Wallenstein, Tony Iaccarino, Laura Edwards, and Sabita Manian. Special thanks to Maurie McInnis for directing me to the image that appears on the cover—I never would have found it without her expert assistance. I also had the good fortune of meeting Robert Vernon, a lay historian in Charlottesville, Virginia, who was then in the process of compiling a guide to county records concerning free blacks. This partial guide represented an amazing introduction to the documentary record. He generously gave me a copy of the draft-in-progress. Thanks to Vernon, I had a list of free black names as well as a set of basic directions for navigating often confusing collections—Vernon’s guide provided the key for deciphering the story of free black life in Albemarle. My time at UVA, around the Hopkins seminar table, and at academic conferences has been invaluable. I am lucky to know Jeff McClurken, George Baca, Andy Lewis, Dylan Penningroth, Natalie Ring, Josh Rothman, and Mark Thompson as good friends whose intellectual insights and humor continue to nourish me. I eagerly await my next fine dinner out at a conference with Jeff, Josh, and Natalie, as long as we never eat again at any place named Pancho Villa’s. I am sure I owe each of them a drink. My former colleagues in the Lynchburg College History Department— Nichole Sanders, Brian Crim, James Owens, and Scott Amos—provided critical commentary as well as companionship and support. I could not ask for better colleagues and friends. We also shared a few amazing students, whose own work on the antebellum South inspired me to persevere through the long publication process. Thanks to Charlotte Arbogast, John Marks, and Ashley Schmidt for their excellent research and writing. Jon Shipe spent the better part of a summer as a graduate assistant making manuscriptformatting corrections and chasing down whatever errand I sent him on. I benefited greatly from my time as a Batten Fellow at the International Center for Jefferson Studies and from a year as a visiting scholar at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for Afro-American and African Affairs at the University of Virginia. There, Peter Onuf and Cinder Stanton did wonders for my understanding of Jefferson’s writings on race and of the Hemings family. Lynchburg College also gave important support by providing both [18.226.187.199...

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