Review by Choice Review
Drawn from thorough research in primary sources, this is the engaging story of one of America's great plantation families. Major Pierce Butler (1744-1822) built an agricultural empire in the lowlands of South Carolina and Georgia that was based on the labor of more than 900 slaves. As a delegate to the Philadelphia Convention in 1787, he worked tirelessly to see slavery protected in the US Constitution. Butler's wastrel grandson sold off half his inherited slaves, causing them great anguish, and clashed with his wife, the English actress Frances Anne Kemble, who opposed slavery. After the Civil War, the family struggled unsuccessfully for two generations to restore the Butler estates to their former glory. Although the book lacks depth of interpretation, it provides a valuable portrait-often unflattering-of the Butler family and of the slaves who worked their lands. There is rich detail on the lives of slaves, their work, diet, religion, family life, and treatment under plantation managers. The author makes extensive use of family correspondence, journals, diaries, newspapers, wills, documents of agricultural production, slave inventories, and records of black births, deaths, escapes, and punishments. His account includes notes, a good bibliography, and 82 pages of records of the Butler family, related figures, and records of slaves and black freemen. Included, too, are some excellent illustrations and photographs of former slaves. Highly recommended.-R. Detweiler, California State University, San Bernardino
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
The Butler family story begins in the mid-1700s, when Irishman Pierce Butler, an officer in the British army, arrived in North America and eventually installed himself in the South Carolina planter class. The saga ends in the early twentieth century, when Butler's great-great-grandson sold the last of the plantation holdings. Author Bell finds this family paradigmatic of that portion of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century southern American society heavily dependent on slavery and dedicated to resisting its abolition. History buffs will lose themselves in these well-ordered, even vigorous pages, as Bell investigates the nature of slave economy via the traits and experiences of the Butlers and pries into the private lives of individual Butler family members and of the slaves themselves. Notes, bibliography; index. BH. 975.8'03 (B) Butler, Pierce / Butler family / Plantation owners Georgia Biography / Plantation owners South Carolina Biography / Plantation life Georgia History 19th century / Plantation life South Carolina History 19th century [CIP] 86-11353
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Pierce Butler (17441822) resigned his British army commission in 1771 when he married into the gentry of South Carolina, where he subsequently established a family fortune based on the plantation labor of nearly 600 slaves. This academic study of Butler, his plantations and the lives of his descendants through the early 1900s provides instructive glimpses of the Southern slave economy and its dissolution after the Civil War. Historian Bell uses primary sources to reveal Butler's inconsistency as an advocate of slavery (he helped ensure its continuation as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention) who efficiently managed his lands from the distance of a Philadelphia townhouse, all the while regretting that he ever came to own one of the ``Wretched Affricans.'' Later, the race issue deeply affected the lives of Butler's heirs, including a grandson married to British actress-abolitionist Fanny Kemble and great-greatgrandson Owen Wister, the novelist, who sold the last of the family estate. Illustrations. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
A life and times family biography. In abundant (and sometimes deadening) detail Bell weaves together the lives of whites and blacks who occupied the Butler properties in Georgia, South Carolina, and Philadelphia. The focus is on Pierce Butler, the ``patriot'' patriarch who bequeathed a legacy of property and self-interest to his family and, as a public figure, a Constitution and government committed to the protection of slavery. While we meet many fascinating members of the Butler family, most striking is the counterpoint of white and black playing out its intricate and contradictory theme in slavery and freedom. Bell's rich account clarifies why the Old South and the New defy easy summary and ensnare our imagination. With the epic sweep of the Children of Pride (1972), this is highly recommended for major libraries. Randall M. Miller, History Dept., St. Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
