In May of 1857, the body of Duncan Skinner was found in a strip of woods along the edge of the plantation near Natchez, Mississippi, where he worked as an overseer. Although a coroner's jury initially ruled his death to be accidental, an investigation organized by planters from the community concluded that he had been murdered by three slaves acting under instructions from John McCallin, an Irish carpenter. Now, almost a century and a half later, Michael Wayne has reopened the case to ask whether the men involved in the investigation arrived at the right verdict. Part essay on the art of historical detection, part seminar on the history of slavery and the Old South, Death of an Overseer is, above all, a murder mystery--a murder mystery that allows readers to sift through the surviving evidence themselves and come to their own conclusions about who killed Duncan Skinner and why.

Enmeshed in the exploitative world of racial slavery, overseers were central figures in the management of early American plantation enterprises. All too frequently dismissed as brutal and incompetent, they defy easy categorisation. Some were rogues, yet others were highly skilled professionals, farmers, and artisans. Some were themselves enslaved. They and their wives, with whom they often formed supervisory partnerships, were caught between disdainful planters and defiant enslaved labourers, as they sought to advance their ambitions. Their history, revealed here in unprecedented detail, illuminates the complex power struggles and interplay of class and race in a volatile slave society.

The first book-length study of the overseer in four decades, Wiethoff's study bridges historical, legal, and rhetorical scholarship to present a provocative investigation into the multifaceted roles of this oft-forgotten figure in plantation society. Wiethoff canvasses the period from 1650 through 1865 and across a southern expanse that stretches to include the Upper and Deep South. Overseers left scant written evidence about their lives and times, but Wiethoff unearths characterizations constructed by friends and enemies, neighbors and strangers. He also mines the legal record to gauge the impact of legislative and case law rhetoric on public memory.

Names. Everyone has one in one form or another. And every name has a meaning, an origin, and an address. If you have ever been overwhelmed by names and need a scorecard to tell who is who, then your Biblical "who's who" is here. The People includes over 3,400 names. Each name has a meaning, a story and a place in scripture. Some of the chapters in the Bible you never thought would make sense, like Chronicles, are sorted out, and each name is explained. What a blessing!

Slavery Remembered is the first major attempt to analyze the slave narratives gathered as part of the Federal Writers' Project. Paul Escott's sensitive examination of each of the nearly 2,400 narratives and his quantitative analysis of the narratives as a whole eloquently present the differing beliefs and experiences of masters and slaves. The book describes slave attitudes and actions; slave-master relationships; the conditions of slave life, including diet, physical treatment, working conditions, housing, forms of resistance, and black overseers; slave cultural institutions; status distinctions among slaves; experiences during the Civil War and Reconstruction; and the subsequent life histories of the former slaves. An important contribution to the study of American slavery, Slavery Remembered is an ideal classroom text for American history surveys as well as more specialized courses.