Customer Reviews

Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil War

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A Southern experiment in black freedom from the 1790s through Civil War times? President Thomas Jefferson condemned slavery but didn't believe whites and liberated blacks could live together in harmony: His cousin Richard Randolph and ninety blacks set out to prove him wrong, and built a bastion of freedom in his heritage to bondsman Hercules White and dozens of other slaves. The lives of the newly freed people on the land Israel Hill is revealed in Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil War, an in-depth survey of how free black and white folk lived together for decades. Chapters provide both a social history of slavery and a set of political insights detailing hardship, black pride, and an impossible dream come to life.

The subject of this history is Israel Hill in the early 19th century, a settlement in Virginia of free African Americans, former slaves who had been emancipated in their former owners' will. The book explores various aspects of lives in this community: land ownership, chosen occupations, relations with the law and with their neighbors.

It is a good and worthy history; I'm glad I read it, as I learned much. It is also a story very much worth telling. The discussion of how many of these men were drawn to the profession of piloting river shipments was particularly interesting.

The modern reader will doubtless be struck by how frequently these individuals were able to assert their rights. The law was certainly not colorblind, and they were discriminated against in many fundamental and structural ways. But the book also shows many instances wherein the freed men and women were able to bring suits and win them, or to be acquitted from unjust charges. Although discrimination was embedded in many aspects of the law, it was nevertheless the case that many a judge and jury would believe the word of a black man with a reputation for honesty over a white man with a reputation for venality.

Would-be readers should be aware, however, that the book is quite detailed. Numerous cases like those referenced above are described, and it can take a fair amount of reading to go through the examples that serve the author's point.

If I have one small criticism of the book, it's in the number of times the author feels compelled to point out that things back on Israel Hill weren't always the way that we modern audiences tend to assume from Pre-Civil War Virginia. He's certainly correct, but we have no way of knowing what future generations will assume about that time. His book would have more staying power if he didn't expect certain presumptions on the part of the reader; his work speaks for itself without them.

But that's a minor quibble; it's an inspiring story, and worth reading. Most general readers will find their understanding of this earlier society much deepened.

Ely's revelations about Free African Americans in Virginia living, working, interacting, and marrying with white rural Virginians is a fascinating, detailed, and insightful revelation. Not so much that it happened, but that it was kept such a secret from the public, and in fact the subject of much dishonest, negative propaganda by the press and the politicians of the era. A week or so after starting to read this fascinating book, a relative was talking about what a great guy his new Cardiologist in Richmond, Va was. And he related that the good Doctor was from Charlotte Court House, between Naruna, Va where I grew up and, the location of New Isreal in Buckingham County. And his name was Randolph...,the family name taken by many of the slaves freed by the Mr. Randolph in the 1700's. This week the legislature of Virginia passed an official statement of regret for the effects of slavery. An institution the the Randolph family escaped a hundred years before most of their peers. Hopefully it wont take another hundred years before an African American Cardiologist from small town Virginia, is not a anomaly.