This study focuses on the lives of the black slave majority in the deep South in the mid-19th century. The topics of civil law, demographics, the role of the church, family life, plantation economics, and gender issues are all revealed through careful study of primary sources previously unexamined by historians. The author has meticulously researched newspapers, court transcripts, county archives, church minutes, plantation journals, and oral histories to produce an astonishingly detailed picture of the lives of blacks and whites during this critical period. The readable narrative was nominated for the Allan Nevins Prize for dissertations in American history in 1993.