A recent find - brilliant, enlightening, entertaining and shocking. What was slavery in Southwest Georgia - what was emancipation in this area of the deep south that was barely touched by the war? When the land-owner reluctantly (not to say unwillingly) says "Y'all are free now", what can a poor boy do - a poor woman - a poor man? What happens when the elderly, the young and the less-than able bodied "slave" is discarded and only the younger men are wanted? How did the black population deal with such new realities?
The work shows the development of the cotton economy in this unique region from its very beginning until the early stages of emancipation. However, the book's strength is its treatment of the daily lives of African Americans. The impact of the planters' initial migration to southwestern Georgia, the ways in which slaves negotiated almost every aspect of their lives with their masters, and the effect of the Civil War on the region are all well developed. O'Donovan also shows the actual process of emancipation at work and how it affected black men, women, and children differently.