South Carolina Books

College-level collections strong in foreign affairs history must have Foreign Affairs and the Constitution in the Age of Fighting Sail: it brings to life events of 1793 and the first test of President George Washington's efforts to establish a foreign policy and to enforce the Constitution's separation of powers statute. It outlines the underlying politics of a confrontation in which the French revolutionary republic sought to obtain support from the U.S. in its war with great Britain, forcing the founding fathers to test the Constitution's separation of powers sections. Understanding their dilemma is key to understanding an important piece of the Constitution - and is key to any college-level collection strong in American political history.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

In the 40 years that have elapsed since General Douglas MacArthur's last campaigns in the Pacific during World War II, his victories have come to be viewed as quick, smooth and simple operations against an improverished foe. However, hindsight has obscured the tenacity of the Japanese and the immense difficulties MacArthur encountered in the Southwest Pacific. Not all his victories were quick and easy. In three major campaigns: Buna in December 1942, Biak in June 1944 and Manilla in 1945, MacArthur was forced to call in a fireman to rally American troops and to salvage desperate tactical situations. MacArthur always used the same field commander to handle his most diffcult missions - Lieutenant General Robert Lawrence Eichelberger. - from book's back cover

This is one of the best works of African-American film studies to come out in years. Many of us who have found the work of David Bogle (Toms, Mammies, Mulattoes, Bucks & Coons) wanting on several levels will have their prayers answered with Robinson's impeccable scholarship and far-reaching analysis of the changing perceptions and representations of African-Americans after the Civil War, Reconstruction and the release of Griffith's BIRTH OF A NATION (1915). What was important for me in reading this book was Robinson's astute ability to discern the origins of the specific caricatures of African-Americans in the traveling minstral shows that circulated throughout the country before the invention of cinema. He also reveals how early American Cinema was predicated upon these caricatures of African-Americans as a revenue generating source of "entertainment". He then reveals how these caricatures were employed by African-American actors as a means to gain employment within the movie industry. The chapters on early American Theatre, Oscar Micheaux, and The Birth of a Nation are the best written efforts I've read in years: fresh and full of new insights. Robinson discusses the duplicitous nature of minstrelsy for whites and African-Americans. This was a throughly engrossing read and a book that will be referenced by scholars, students and filmmakers for years to come.

Unique tales of the Old North State; not the same ones as every other NC story books

There really need to be more books like this one. Instead of focusing on one of the major leaders of the Revolution and early days of the republic such as Washington, Adams, Jefferson or Madison, this work focuses on a remarkable family that played a very important part in the revolution and the early days of the republic, the Pickneys.

The Pickneys were part of the merchant/planter/lawyer class that was important in South Carolina and in particular Charleston. The wealth of the family came from that particular mix of enterprises. As one of the most prominent families in South Carolina they were of course related to the other important families in Charleston such as the Middletons, the Draytons, and the Rutledges.

The main figures of the family during the period of 1760-1820 are Charles Pickney III, Thomas Pickney, and Charles Cotsworth Pickney. While Williams is good in terms of explaining how these remarkable individuals are related, there is unfortunately no family tree in the book and in order to keep everyone straight I had to make my own. This really is the one failing of the book.

Charles Cotesworth and Thomas Pickney were officers in the continental army during the American Revolution and as such later became important members of the Federalist Party. Charles was the head of the party after the death of Hamilton and the nominee for president as the Federalist Party declined. Both Charles Cotesworth and Thomas Pickney were also involved in the diplomatic efforts of the early Republic, Charles most notably with the French during the Adams presidency.

Charles III's contribution was limited to the political sphere and unlike his cousins tended toward the Jeffersonians or Democratic Republican Party. He also made noteworthy contributions to the constitutional convention, a feature examined by Williams. All of the cousins held leading offices both in the state of South Carolina and representing that state at the federal level.

I think this book is enlightening both on the revolutionary campaigns in the south and the role South Carolina and the Pickneys played in the early says of the republic. This book offers a fresh perspective on the dynamics of the early days of the United States and is worthwhile reading for anyone interested in this topic.

Cecil J. Williams is a familiar name to those with roots in SC. He is a photographer par excellence. His pictures are deep, moving, informative, relative and meaningful. This book documents important events and people in the south during the 50's and 60's thanks to his "everyready" camera. We see familiar faces and not so familiar faces. We see documentation of a people's determinedness to be treated civily and with dignity. We see the faces of children, the hope of the future. He shares document showing the signatures of the faculty members of what is now South Carolina State University, who put their professional careers on the line ( only 1 member of the faculty/staff did not sign)is especially important. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in reading about the civil rights struggle, but especially those who have roots in South Carolina.

In this volume, Joseph Reidy traces the development of Central Georgia from the period of its earliest settlement following the Revolutionary War through Reconstruction, focusing on economic, political, and social changes. Prior to 1830, most Georgians were yeoman farmers seeking self-sufficiency, owning only a few slaves with whom they lived and worked in a familiar manner. During the cotton boom of the 1830s, large planters moved into the area, establishing the plantation system, large numbers of slaves, and the ganging method of production. The depression of the 1840s allowed the planters to make gains at the expense of yeomen, as they bought up land and slaves at low prices from debt-burdened farmers. The process of planter consolidation and domination continued into the 1850s when cotton prices rose. Reidy argues that to respond to increased demand, rather than practicing scientific agriculture to increase output, planters in central Georgia simply increased the workload of their slaves, hiring additional overseers from the newly dispossessed white lower class. The increased tensions between planters, struggling yeomen, overburdened slaves, and the new landless poor whites played out in the Secession crisis and period of Reconstruction.

Despite their claims that a slave republic was the only form of government capable of producing harmonious social relations, planters were aware that the growing poverty in the region undermined this argument and threatened to turn the yeomanry and poor whites against them. Evidence of this division could be seen in the growth of party politics, with planters, town dwellers, and immigrants preferring the Democratic Party, and yeomen and poor whites turning to the Know-Nothings. Planters hoped to alleviate social tensions by funding poor relief, public education, and internal improvements that would bring new jobs, but the yeomanry, while approving in theory of public works, rejected them out of opposition to the higher taxes such projects would entail. Once the Civil War broke out, planter actions only furthered the destruction of the social and economic relations they had hoped to save, as planters refused to devote all resources to winning the war at the expense of current profits. They continued to plant cotton when grain was needed to supply troops and would not contract out their slaves to war materiel producers at low prices, resulting in rising prices for yeomen families who could not maintain self-sufficiency with their household heads away fighting the war and decreasing purchasing power for white laborers. Planters were unable to feed or protect their slaves from Union troops, destroying slaves' faith in paternalism and forcing them to take care of themselves, which prepared them for independence following emancipation.

Following the war, planters hoped to exercise the same control over free blacks as they had over slaves, but with the help of the Freedman's Bureau and Radical Republicans, free blacks negotiated for more control over working conditions, their families, religious institutions, and rights as citizens. While facing legal discrimination at every turn, they were in many cases able to negotiate contracts as sharecroppers, educate their children, exercise their right to vote (though not to hold office), and establish their own churches and political movements. Yeomen also benefited somewhat in that they now had unprecedented ability to hire black laborers, but were harmed by new laws limiting hunting and fishing on unenclosed lands, which diminished their ability to subsist as much as it did that of freedmen. Both black and white non-planters increasingly turned to wage labor, marking central Georgia's transition to a capitalist economic system. Planters lost a good deal of their political and economic dominance, but maintained as much of their social power as they could under the newly bourgeois order.

Uya's biography of Robert Smalls: cloth-bound, 178 pp, illustrated with a frontisportrait and a map. Index and a 6 page appendix in which he lists his bibliographic sources in prose.

This powerful narrative, written by a direct descendant of the princess Yani, draws on stories of incidents taken from the author's family history that were passed from generation to generation until set down here.

For a time, Yani is happy as a slave on Denfield's South Carolina plantation. She becomes the favorite of black and white alike. Denfield's sons instruct her in grammar and deportment. At a festive plantation "slave wedding," she is mated with the giant slave Koba amid much feasting and merriment.

Deep sorrow comes when Yani's slave husband and their daughter, Yola, are sold to other masters. Years pass, and Yani learns nothing of her child's fate. She does not even know that she has a grandchild. Yet why is she so strangely attracted to the slave girl Lucinda, whom she meets in Charleston?

Yani seeks consolation in the music she plays on her African harp, and in her prophetic visions, which reveal that her people will be freed from bondage and find the peace she so deeply desires. Her story, "From the Slave Cabin of Yani," is a moving account of slavery and a woman's hopes for her children and her people.

Gave this book to my Father for Christmas. He is a big gamecock fan and loved it. I know several others who have this book and they also enjoyed it.