A Mind to Stay: White Plantation, Black Homeland by Sidney Nathans (review)

This is an unusual book, to its merit. Sydney Nathans has mined a rich set of antebellum records, tracing the sale of a Hale County, Alabama, plantation to its former enslaved residents. Because the sale somewhat stabilized the community, it was possible for the author to interview residents, starting in the 1970s. The oral tradition extended far enough back that Nathans could link the plantation records to the stories transmitted to the descendants. This blending of abundant manuscript sources in the first half of the book with oral testimony in the second, gives the work novelty and interest. It suffices as praise to say that it is a unique, but believable, composite reconstruction in the author's hands.

This is not a tale of planter benevolence. Paul Cameron visited from North Carolina in 1844, to invest part of his father's fortune in fresh land. His 1,700-acre purchase just south of Cedarville was, however, ill chosen; he was "wronged, grossly wronged" by a relative, and liquor then reinforced his public humiliation (40). He spent the succeeding decades trying to wring satisfactory profits from his enslaved people, and aided by a better-favored Mississippi Delta purchase, he moved laborers between plantations with an increasing lack of consideration for their expectations for good treatment. Work disputes figure prominently in Cameron's records, with one unfortunate runaway being too scarred to sell to traders (72). Reversals in the Civil War, along with the declining fortunes of cotton after emancipation, reinforced his distaste for the Alabama enterprise. Pressed by North Carolina demands for cash, and prodded by his overseer's interest in the Cameron Place, the absentee owner sold directly to freedpeople in 1874, disregarding the wishes of the neighboring whites. It took some years to pay for it, but eleven purchasers gained title to seven contiguous farms; here was the tainted genesis of an unusual freedmen's settlement in the heart of the Black Belt. It was an impoverished community, on indifferent land, but diminishing shards survived a century and more. This mere fact was a source of pride to the descendants, insuring that these stories would be retold and embellished.

The oral tradition is that Cameron, and his overseer, were on relatively good terms with one of his former slaves, Paul Hargis, and the documents do not contradict that account (105-6, 112). Hargis was regarded as a superior worker, and the stories he told put his ex-master in a positive light, including the gift of a "bag of gold" on a shared trip from North Carolina (17-8, 148). Another figure in the book, Ned Hargress, derived his first name from the father he claimed, none other than Nathan Bedford Forrest (164). Such tales do suggest the limitations of the more distant oral accounts, and the author exhibits due skepticism of the specifics. Still, if one reads the second-hand tales as a record of how people felt about what occurred, and how they heard the stories, the results can give a human, even contemporary, dimension to slavery's legacy.

The tales suggest a central plotline of seeking independence, but the aftermath is detailed and complex. The community functioned in the shadow of the founders as they aged. The land purchase did not secure material prosperity, and the limited land, credit, and mobility of the descendants diminished options. Paul Hargis, for example, lost a leg when his shack proved insufficient shelter in a severe snowstorm. Afterwards, as he hobbled about on his peg-leg, he made a living by opening a crossroads store. His relative prosperity irritated his tenants and relations, especially when he left a share of his property to the hard-working Ned Hargress. The eleven-acre bequest to this "yellow cousin" antagonized the entire neighborhood for decades, which the author partly ascribes to African beliefs as to who could or could not inherit property...