The Butlers of Iberville Parish, Louisiana: Dunboyne Plantation in the 1800s by David D. Plater (review)

David D. Plater’s The Butlers of Iberville Parish, Louisiana: Dunboyne Plantation in the 1800s is a family biography that illuminates the experiences of the Louisiana planter class during the nineteenth century. Plater’s extensively researched book focuses on the lives of his ancestors Edward G. W. Butler and Frances Parke Lewis. The couple moved to Iberville Parish in 1831 to run Dunboyne, their sugar plantation. Seeking to attain higher social status and provide for their children, the Butlers encountered numerous challenges, particularly during the Civil War and postbellum era, which ultimately forced them to sell their property in 1871.

Through his detailed analysis of the Butler family, Plater contributes to the work of historians who study the southern planter class on a broader scale. His scholarly influences include Richard Follet, The Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Louisiana’s Cane World, 1820–1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005); Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Matthew Pratt Guterl, Matthew Pratt Guterl, American Mediterranean: Southern Slaveholders in the Age of Emancipation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008); and James L. Roark, Masters without Slaves: Southern Planters in the Civil War and Reconstruction (New York: Norton, 1977). These works examine overarching trends that affected planters across the South before and after the abolition of slavery; by comparison, Plater’s book is written in narrative form, as a chronological retelling of the Butler family’s history. Divided into twelve chapters that explore different biographical, local, and national events, The Butlers of Iberville Parish also contains a brief introduction, an epilogue, and a section containing genealogical information.

Plater draws from a wide range of primary and secondary sources to piece together and contextualize the family’s history. To investigate the intimacies of family life, Plater examines private and published correspondence, memoirs, and diaries. Through an analysis of family records, land deeds, sugar crop statements, and Public Works files, he provides readers with a rich portrait of the economic workings of Dunboyne and neighboring plantations in Iberville Parish. He also unearths information pertaining to pre- and postemancipation relations between blacks and whites in the records of the Iberville Freedmen’s Bureau, Dunboyne’s plantation account book, and private correspondence.

The Butlers of Iberville Parish explores several important themes, including planters’ military contributions during the antebellum era and Civil War, their role in settling western territories, and their efforts to improve their social standing. In addition, Plater writes that two of the book’s central goals are to investigate how descendants of early American families perceived “their obligations to their country and their ancestry” and to assess “how faithful they were to their heritage” (1). His investigation of the Butler family’s management of Dunboyne also sheds light on the critical role women played in supervising plantation operations, particularly when their husbands were away on business or serving in the military.

The first three chapters introduce the reader to the book’s protagonists, Frances and Edward Butler, by exploring their lineage, courtship, and mutual decision to move to Louisiana. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss the Butlers’ development and expansion of their new property, jobs that required learning about the complexities of growing sugar cane, purchasing slaves, working with financial institutions to value their assets, and managing and refinancing their debt. The sixth chapter describes Edward Butler’s military service during the Mexican-American War (1846–48) as well as Frances Butler’s management of Dunboyne in his absence. Chapter 7 depicts Dunboyne on the eve of war at the height of its prosperity and chapter 8 describes Edward Butler’s actions prior to and during the 1861 Secession Convention. In the ninth chapter, the Civil War takes its toll on Dunboyne and its inhabitants with the weakening of the sugar...