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Randolph B. Campbell, Slavery in Florida: Territorial Days to Emancipation. By Larry Eugene Rivers. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000. xvi, 369 pp. $29.95, isbn 0-8130-1813-7.), Journal of American History, Volume 88, Issue 3, December 2001, Pages 1070–1071, https://doi.org/10.2307/2700436
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Extract
In 1973 Julia Floyd Smith published a study of slavery in Florida from 1821 to 1860 that dealt primarily with the issues deemed critical in studies of the South's peculiar institution at that time: the rise of plantations and the extent to which planters were capitalist or non capitalist. Larry Eugene Rivers's new book does not supplant Smith's work; rather, it offers a broader account both chronologically and topically. He begins with a chapter on blacks in Spanish Florida and concludes with one on slavery in the state during the Civil War. In the intervening chapters, he concentrates on the lives of the slaves and emphasizes interactions between whites and blacks and between blacks and Indians.
Rather than applying or testing any particular theoretical model of slavery, Rivers approached his study by asking large questions about the institution in Florida and seeking answers in the evidence. The result is a well grounded account of the experiences of enslaved blacks that demonstrates how little life differed for most southern slaves, even in a frontier state such as Florida. Rivers compares plantationdominated middle Florida with east and west Florida, regions with generally smaller farms and slaveholdings, and as would be expected finds some differences in work arrangements. However, when he turns to consideration of key aspects of social life such as the family, religion, community, and physical treatment, he presents material for the state as a whole rather than contrasting the regions. And his descriptions, which are based of necessity primarily on materials from the late antebellum years such as the WPA (Works Progress Administration) slave narratives, do not differ markedly from those of slave life elsewhere in the South.
