Hugh Davis and His Alabama Plantation
192 pages, 6 x 9
Paperback
Release Date:22 Mar 2004
ISBN:9780817350659
Hugh Davis and His Alabama Plantation
SERIES:
Library of Alabama Classics
University of Alabama Press
Hugh Davis and His Alabama Plantation provides a detailed account of the founding, management, and finances of a Southern Antebellum plantation. After practicing law in Marion, Alabama for 14 years, Hugh Davis became a cotton planter in 1848 at Beaver Bend, where he brought 5,000 acres of Blackbelt land on the Cahaba River under cultivation and partook of the last decade of hubristic wealth before the coming of the Civil War.
Scholars and readers continue to illuminate the complex financial arrangements of the Antebellum South, many regions of which lacked basic banking services. Following the life of Davis traces his early years of apprenticeship and debt, the use of rotating credit, and the relationship of slaves to finances. The book is also full of fascinating details of his life, such as the setting out in one month of 750 yards of roses. This account also recounts the how this financial system and lifestyle were swept away by the Civil War.
Scholars and general readers interested in Southern history as illuminated not in macroeconomic theories but in the quotidian life and choices of one man will find much of interest in Davis's life.
Scholars and readers continue to illuminate the complex financial arrangements of the Antebellum South, many regions of which lacked basic banking services. Following the life of Davis traces his early years of apprenticeship and debt, the use of rotating credit, and the relationship of slaves to finances. The book is also full of fascinating details of his life, such as the setting out in one month of 750 yards of roses. This account also recounts the how this financial system and lifestyle were swept away by the Civil War.
Scholars and general readers interested in Southern history as illuminated not in macroeconomic theories but in the quotidian life and choices of one man will find much of interest in Davis's life.
‘A valuable addition to published materials concerning the plantation system in the South. . . . A promising lawyer, Davis purchased in 1847 the Cahaba River plantation of Beaver Bend [5,000 acres of Black Belt land ten miles from Marion], which he operated until his death in 1862. He cleared land, bought slaves, increased his cotton acreage, hired and fired overseers, tried slaves as overseers, experimented with seeds, irrigation, and methods of fertilizing soil and erosion prevention.’ —Mississippi Valley Historical Review
'Much information is included concerning slavery; for example, prices of slaves, feeding and clothing of slaves, caring for slaves when ill, slave quarters, regulations, marriages, even a slave job chart.' —Journal of Negro Education
Weymouth Tyree Jordan was the head of the Department of History at Florida State University and author of George Washington Campbell of Tennessee: Western Statesman.
