"Phillips came close to greatness as a historian, perhaps as close and any historian this country has produced. We may leave to those who live in the world of absolute good and evil the task of explaining how a man with such primitive views of fundamental social questions could write such splendid history. . . . He asked more and better questions than many of us still are willing to admit, and he carried on his investigations with consistent freshness and critical intelligence. . . . AMERICAN NEGRO SLAVERY is not the last word on its subject; merely the indispensable first."-- Eugene D....

Celebrated as a classic work of historical literature, Life and Labor in the Old South (1929) represents the culmination of three decades of research and reflection on the social and economic systems of the antebellum South by the leading historian of African American slavery of the first half of the twentieth century. Life and Labor in the Old South represents both the strengths and weaknesses of first-rate scholarship by whites on the topics of antebellum African and African American slavery during the Jim Crow era. Deeply researched in primary sources, carefully focused on social and...

Reprint. Originally published in 1908 by Columbia University Press.

Ulrich Bonnell Phillips (1877--1934) established a reputation as one of the early twentieth century's foremost authorities on the history of African American slavery and the Old South. An empiricist, Phillips approached his subjects analytically and dispassionately, and his scholarship shaped historical investigation of the South for decades. Phillips was an empiricist and based his writing on an array of primary sources, including a growing collection of photographs he accumulated during his research. These images of plantation crops and machinery, agricultural scenes, distinctive...