A self-portrait of an admirable plantation mistress spanning a period from antebellum days until World War I.

The story of the African American struggle for freedom.

Reprinted here for the first time in more than forty years is Rice Planter and Sportsman: The Recollections of J. Motte Alston, 1821-1909.

This lively memoir offers a candid look into the daily life of a Low Country South Carolina family, as well as commentary and opinion about such matters as rice cultivation, slavery, and the sporting life.

J. Motte Alston's memoirs, originally numbering more than five hundred pages, were never intended for official publication. Alston wrote for his grandson, who was fascinated by his family's personal history and how it fit into the larger...

This look at the Confederate experience of soldiers, African Americans, and women sparked a debate about the reasons for southern defeat when it was first published in 1944. It challenges southern myths about a contented and loyal slave population, and questions popular morale.

Benjamin Ryan Tillman (1847-1918) accomplished a political revolution in South Carolina when he defeated Governor Wade Hampton and the old guard Bourbons who had run the state since the end of Reconstruction. Tillman and his movement aimed to expand the political control of the state to lower- and middle-class whites at the expense of African Americans and the state's former leaders. During his political ascendancy as governor and then United States Senator, Tillman introduced the state's dispensary system and shaped the state's 1895 constitution into a bulwark of white supremacy. His legacy...