by Nathalie Dessens

Overview

"Effectively integrates Caribbean history with Louisiana history, with a touch of Europe thrown in. It will be welcomed by scholars of Atlantic history."--Virginia Meacham Gould, author of No Cross on Earth, No Crown in Heaven: Black Nuns in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans, and the forthcoming Colonial New Orleans (UPF)

"An important book [that will] contribute much to the historiography on Louisiana as well as to a wider understanding of circum-Caribbean migrations and influences."--Daniel H. Usner, Vanderbilt University, author of Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley Before 1783

Dessens examines the legacy of approximately 15,000 Saint-Domingue refugees--whites, slaves, and free people of color--who settled in Louisiana between 1791 and 1815. Forced to flee their French Caribbean colony following a slave rebellion that gave birth to the Haitian Republic in January 1804, they spread throughout the Caribbean and along the North American Atlantic coast. Forming a relatively coherent diaspora for at least two decades, they concentrated in New Orleans. In this first comprehensive study of the Saint-Domingue influence, Dessens brings to light a refugee community composed in almost equal proportions of three population groups, yet completely forgotten by Louisiana historiography for more than 150 years, despite its arrival during a crucial historical era, its participation in the economic, social, and political life of a new homeland, and its cultural legacy to the “Creole capital.”
A few pioneer historians of Louisiana raised the Saint-Domingue refugees from oblivion in the mid-20th century, but only one collection of articles, The Road to Louisiana, has ever been published about them. Dessens finds that the new arrivals established New Orleans’ first newspapers and many of its oldest schools and left their cultural influence on the city’s music and architecture. The immigrants also brought with them inclusive ideas about people of African descent that helped shape local race relations. The children of these refugees carefully orchestrated shoemaker Homer Plessy’s vain attempt to outlaw segregation.
Drawing on sources in France and the United States, as well as civic, church, and other primary documents in New Orleans, Dessens examines the salient features of the refugees’ former society, the reasons they left, the migration itself, and their reception and integration into New Orleans society. Revealing a better understanding of migratory movements and of Louisiana’s exceptionalism in the United States, this study will be of special interest to historians of the South, Gulf South, Louisiana, and New Orleans, as well as African American, Latin American, and Caribbean history, migration, and genealogy.

Nathalie Dessens is professor of American history and civilization at the University of Toulouse. She is the author of Myths of the Plantation Society: Slavery in the American South and the West Indies (UPF).

Other NATHALIE DESSENS Books
Myths of the Plantation Society: Slavery in the American South and the West Indies

Details: 272 pages 6x9
Cloth: $65.00 ISBN: 0-8130-9780813030371
Expected Pubdate: 2/25/2007
Series: Southern Dissent

by Eric Burin

Overview

“An exceptional work that will stand for years as the best study of the African colonization movement. Burin’s insights into this often misunderstood idea will be appreciated by all historians of the early national era. The research, both archival and secondary, is excellent.”--Douglas Egerton, Le Moyne College

 “Burin adds significantly to our understanding of the world view of slaveholding colonizationists, of their negotiations with prospectively freed people, and of their struggle with proslavery critics of colonization. . . . Historians of proslavery thought will find new ideas and information here.”--Torrey Stephen Whitman, Mount St. Mary’s College

From the early 1700s through the late 1800s, many whites advocated removing blacks from America. The American Colonization Society (ACS) epitomized this desire to deport black people. Founded in 1816, the ACS championed the repatriation of black Americans to Liberia in West Africa. Supported by James Madison, James Monroe, Henry Clay, and other notables, the ACS sent thousands of black emigrants to Liberia. In examining the ACS’s activities in America and Africa, Eric Burin assesses the organization’s impact on slavery and race relations.

 Burin focuses on ACS manumissions—that is, instances wherein slaves were freed on the condition that they go to Liberia. In doing so, he provides the first account of the ACS that covers the entire South throughout the antebellum era. He investigates everyone involved in the society’s affairs, from the emancipators and freedpersons at the center to the colonization agents, free blacks, southern jurists, newspaper editors, neighboring whites, proslavery ideologues, northern colonizationists, and abolitionists on the periphery. In mixing a panoramic view of ACS operations with close-ups on individual participants, Burin presents a unique, bifocal perspective on the ACS.

 Although colonization leaders initially envisioned their program as a pacific enterprise, in reality the push-and-pull among emancipators, freedpersons, and others rendered ACS manumissions logistically complex, financially troublesome, legally complicated, and at times socially disruptive enterprises. Like pebbles dropped in water, ACS manumissions rippled outward, destabilizing slavery in their wake. Based on extensive archival research and a database of 11,000 ACS emigrants, Burin’s study offers new insights concerning the origins, intentions, activities, and fate of the colonization movement.

Eric Burin is assistant professor of history at the University of North Dakota.

by Ira Dye

Overview

“The first modern biography of Uriah Levy to exploit the full range of available primary sources . . . an excellent window on the social history of the U.S. Navy during the age of sail.”--Robert J. Schneller, Naval Historical Center

Uriah Levy’s naval career spanned the age of sail to the era of steam-driven ironclads. As one of the few Jewish Americans in the U.S. Navy, Levy was the target of prejudice and was court-martialed six times for his response to perceived insults, yet he was the only Jew who reached the rank of Flag Officer. As an advocate for the enlisted soldier, he fought for and succeeded in putting an end to flogging in the Navy. As perhaps the first American historic preservationist, he bought and restored Jefferson’s beloved but failing Monticello and opened it for public tours. In further tribute to his idol, he commissioned the statue of Jefferson that stands in the U.S. Capitol rotunda today.

Drawing on archival and printed sources, British and American naval records, local records of Levy’s residences, the records of several Jewish congregations in the United States, and rarely used naval court martial records, Ira Dye has produced a modern biography of Levy in the context of his time, focusing on his contributions as a naval officer from the War of 1812 until the Civil War as well as the personal characteristics that drove him to make those contributions. Levy served in the Mediterranean during the early antebellum period when the United States was establishing a presence in that area, later commanded the Mediterranean Squadron during the turbulent years of European unrest in the 1850s, was on board the Argus during its fatal cruise in the War of 1812, and presided over one of the few documented charges of homosexual activity in the Old Navy.

Rich with details of life in the sailing navy, the story of Uriah Levy is a significant contribution to antebellum naval history.

Ira Dye served in the Navy and retired as captain in 1967.

by Ronald L. Hatzenbuehler

Overview

“In distinguishing Jefferson’s universal appeal from his provincial identity, this thought-provoking book makes an important contribution to the study of the founding era.”--Andrew Burstein, University of Tulsa

Hatzenbuehler argues that Jefferson, though celebrated as a nationalist, is best understood as a member of the Virginia gentry who viewed the nation through the lens of his native “country,” the Commonwealth of Virginia. Throughout his life, Jefferson was torn between his participation in a privileged order and his periodic dissent from the order’s ways. In taking Virginians to task for their failure to improve Virginia society, he masked his own reluctance to make fundamental changes in his life.

The zenith of Jefferson’s criticism came in Notes on the State of Virginia, where he chided his fellow Virginians for failing to take advantage of the opportunities that independence from Great Britain promised--including writing a new state constitution, establishing religious freedom, educating all of the state’s youth, farming grains instead of planting tobacco, and abolishing slavery. The height of his withdrawal from the commitment to the change he advocated came after his presidency, when he allowed his gentry culture to ensnare him.

The author also investigates specific issues of contention in the Jefferson literature, among them Jefferson’s reliance on the writings of early Virginian writers and George Mason in drafting Summary View of the Rights of British America and the Declaration of Independence, the influence of the great French Encyclopedie on his composition of Notes on the State of Virginia, his authorship of the Kentucky Resolutions, his unfulfilled revolution as president, and the timing of the creation of the University of Virginia. Carefully drawing on Jefferson’s voluminous correspondence, Hatzenbuehler does not shy away from the Founding Father’s failings but finds much to admire.

Ronald L. Hatzenbuehler is professor of history at Idaho State University.

by Philip Levy

Overview

"Levy takes a broad canvass and examines relations between native and non-native travelers . . . as well as the different understandings, experiences, and perspectives they brought to the trail. This book is a contribution to 'trail studies,' but . . . more than that, the lessons of the encounters discussed here have much wider application and relevance to the larger collision of cultures that is early American history."--Colin G. Calloway, Dartmouth College

When Europeans first arrived on North American shores, they came to a continent crisscrossed by a well-trodden network of native trails. The traders, missionaries, diplomatists, and naturalists who traveled these trails depended in no small measure on the skills, knowledge, and goodwill of the native people who were squarely in colonization's crosshairs. This study of 16th- to 19-century native and European travel companions, or "fellow travelers," as Levy calls them, draws on anthropological studies and applies ethnohistorical methodology to convey how Indians and Europeans traveling together and seeing the same things might interpret them in very different ways. Examining the writings of European travelers who took to trails and rivers from the Rio Grande to the Arctic, Levy argues that travel relationships evolved from patterns of coercion and miscommunication to partnerships based on careful and constant negotiation. The shared trail was an arena of contested meanings. Levy explores the many forms such contests took and how they contributed to the larger shape and course of colonial travel.

Choosing one path over another, accepting or rejecting advice, and deciding whose travel habits to respect on the trail all influenced the small footsteps that made up every colonial trek. Dispelling the simplistic image of European travelers and explorers as heroes, Levy stresses the contingent and dependent nature of these endeavors, noting that natives were vital to the Europeans and vice versa; many natives came to rely on their fellow travelers as well. The realities of the trail potentially blurred distinctions among people eating the same food, treading the same path, and often wearing similar clothes, yet travelers worked hard to maintain distinctions between them. In sharing the rigors and burdens of the trail and relying on one another in a variety of ways, Indian and European travelers entwined their fates.

Philip Levy is assistant professor of history and adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of South Florida.

by Carolyn Morrow Long

Overview

“The legend of Marie Laveau, New Orleans’ Voudou Queen, has a compelling hold on the popular imagination. Carolyn Morrow Long uncovers the fascinating story of the flesh-and-blood woman behind the legend and in so doing enriches our understanding of life in New Orleans in the nineteenth century.”--Vaughan B. Baker, University of Louisiana, Lafayette

Against the backdrop of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century New Orleans, A New Orleans Voudou Priestess: The Legend and Reality of Marie Laveau disentangles the complex threads of the legend surrounding the famous Voudou priestess. According to mysterious, oft-told tales, Laveau was an extraordinary celebrity whose sorcery-fueled influence extended widely from slaves to upper-class whites. Some accounts claim that she led the “orgiastic” Voudou dances in Congo Square and on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, kept a gigantic snake named Zombi, and was the proprietress of an infamous house of assignation. Though legendary for an unusual combination of spiritual power, beauty, charisma, showmanship, intimidation, and shrewd business sense, she also was known for her kindness and charity, nursing yellow fever victims and ministering to condemned prisoners, and her devotion to the Roman Catholic Church. The true story of Marie Laveau, though considerably less flamboyant than the legend, is equally compelling.

In separating verifiable fact from semi-truths and complete fabrication, Long explores the unique social, political, and legal setting in which the lives of Marie Laveau’s African and European ancestors became intertwined. Changes in New Orleans engendered by French and Spanish rule, the Louisiana Purchase, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow segregation affected seven generations of Laveau’s family, from enslaved great-grandparents of pure African blood to great-grandchildren who were legally classified as white. Simultaneously, Long examines the evolution of New Orleans Voudou, which until recently has been ignored by scholars.

Carolyn Morrow Long is research associate at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.

by Daniel S. Murphree

Overview

“Race and racism simply did not arrive to the shores of Florida. Instead, this volume demonstrates how racism emerged out of the frustrations and failures of the Spaniards, Frenchmen, and Britons to control the land and people of Florida . . . an important addition to the growing literature of race in early America.”--Andrew K. Frank, Florida Atlantic University

Constructing Floridians explores the origins of racialization in peninsular Florida and its hinterlands during the 300 years prior to the founding of the United States. Focusing not on a single ethnic or cultural community but on all the major groups in the region during the colonial period, this sociocultural study of Europeans and native tribes examines the processes by which the peoples of Spain, France, and Great Britain and half a dozen Florida tribes--the Gulaes, Calusas, Timucuans, Apalachees, Creeks, and Seminoles--forged understandings of one another and themselves through their individual and collective ideas and activities. Murphree argues that the Europeans, frustrated by their inability to “tame” the peninsula, blamed the natives for their problems. Emphasizing how environmental limitations and repeated colonial failures contributed to increasingly negative perceptions and characterizations of American Indians--which the Europeans attributed to perceived racial differences--he contends that barriers between the Europeans and the Indians hardened over time.

Surveying the evolution of relationships from the era of early Spanish exploration to the American Revolution, this work offers new perspectives through which to view European conceptualizations of Indians, illuminates specific native roles in molding a backcountry society, and reconsiders overall North American population interaction during the period. The story of Florida’s past through a perspective rarely applied to the peninsula or its borderlands should appeal to audiences interested in Florida’s colonial development, Native Americans in the region, or issues of race and identity in early modern history.

Daniel S. Murphree is assistant professor of history at the University of Texas, Tyler.

by John H. Schroeder

Overview

“Lets us see Rodgers ‘warts and all’ as both an example of the best of naval leadership and as a reactionary in an era of rapid technological change. Readers will be intrigued by the insights into the commodore’s relationship with his wife, that enlightens our understanding of what it means to be a navy wife.”--David Curtis Skaggs, Bowling Green State University

“This splendidly written short biography by a distinguished naval historian amply demonstrates why [Rodgers] was one of the most important figures in the early sailing navy.”--Spencer C. Tucker, Virginia Military Institute

Schroeder’s interpretive biography restores Rodgers to his rightful place in history as the preeminent and most influential naval officer during America’s Age of Sail. Between 1798 and 1815, Rodgers fought with distinction in the Naval War with France, the Barbary War, and the War of 1812. He shaped the postwar development of the navy as president of the Board of Navy Commissioners from 1815 to 1835, and he led a major diplomatic mission to the Mediterranean in the mid 1820s. Drawing on extensive manuscript sources--including the voluminous Rodgers family papers--and the wealth of articles, essays, and monographs on American naval history in recent years, Schroeder provides a candid appraisal of Rodgers’ personal strengths and weaknesses, professional successes and failures.

Resented for his gruff exterior but celebrated for his determination to build a navy of the highest professional standards, Rodgers never revealed to his naval contemporaries the passionate and emotional dimension of his character that is evident in his correspondence with his wife, Minerva, who bore him 11 children. Their letters represent a rare and remarkably detailed account of family life in the 19th century.

Schroeder’s thorough analysis of official documents offers a fresh perspective on the dramatic events of Rodgers’ long career, including his personal involvement in the capture of the French frigate L’Insurgente in 1799, the war with Tripoli, the testing of Robert Fulton’s experimental torpedoes in 1810, the Little Belt affair in 1811, the escape of the British frigate Belvidera in 1812, the defense of Baltimore in 1814, the deadly duel between Stephen Decatur and James Barron in 1820, and the introduction of steam power to the U.S. Navy.

This first modern biography of Rodgers since Charles O. Paullin’s work in 1910 will be of special interest to scholars and devotees of early American naval, political, and diplomatic history, especially the Age of Fighting Sail.

John H. Schroeder is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

by Joshua M. Smith

Overview

“Full of revealing episodes vividly told, Joshua Smith’s book will contribute to the emerging attention to the Canadian-American borderland, an attention that challenges the narrow, nationalist historical traditions which ignore the important and continuous exchange of people and goods that transgressed the boundary.”--Alan Taylor, University of California at Davis

Passamaquoddy Bay lies between Maine and New Brunswick at the mouth of the St. Croix River. Most of it (including Campobello Island) is within Canada, but the Maine town of Lubec lies at the bay’s entrance. Rich in beaver pelts, fish, and timber, the area was a famous smuggling center after the American Revolution. Joshua Smith examines the reasons for smuggling in this area and how three conflicts in early republic history--the 1809 Flour War, the War of 1812, and the 1820 Plaster War--reveal smuggling’s relationship to crime, borderlands, and the transition from mercantilism to capitalism.

Smith astutely interprets smuggling as created and provoked by government efforts to maintain and regulate borders. In 1793 British and American negotiators framed a vague new boundary meant to demarcate the lingering British empire in North America (Canada) from the new American Republic. Officials insisted that an abstract line now divided local peoples on either side of Passamaquoddy Bay. Merely by persisting in trade across the newly demarcated national boundary, people violated the new laws. As smugglers, they defied both the British and American efforts to restrict and regulate commerce. Consequently, local resistance and national authorities engaged in a continuous battle for four decades.

Smith treats the Passamaquoddy Bay smuggling as more than a local episode of antiquarian interest. Indeed, he crafts a local case study to illuminate a widespread phenomenon in early modern Europe and the Americas.

Joshua M. Smith is assistant professor of humanities at the United States Merchant Marine Academy.