A panoramic portrait of the city of Savannah before, during, and after the Civil War—a poignant story of the African American freedom struggle in this prosperous southern riverport, set against a backdrop of military conflict and political turmoil. Jacqueline Jones, prizewinning author of the groundbreaking Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow, has written a masterpiece of time and place, transporting readers to the boisterous streets of this fascinating city.

Drawing on military records, diaries, letters, newspapers, and memoirs, Jones brings Savannah to life in all its diversity, weaving together the stories of individual men and women, bankers and dockworkers, planters and field hands, enslaved laborers and free people of color. The book captures in vivid detail the determination of former slaves to integrate themselves into the nation’s body politic and to control their own families, workplaces, churches, and schools. She explains how white elites, forestalling democracy and equality, created novel political and economic strategies to maintain their stranglehold on the machinery of power, and often found unexpected allies in northern missionaries and military officials.

Jones brilliantly describes life in the Georgia lowcountry—what it was like to be a slave toiling in the disease-ridden rice swamps; the strivings of black entrepreneurs, slaves and free blacks alike; and the bizarre intricacies of the slave-master relationship. Here are the stories of Thomas Simms, an enslaved brickmason who escapes to Boston only to be captured by white authorities; Charles Jones Jr., the scion of a prominent planter family, who remains convinced that Savannah is invincible even as the city’s defenses fall one after the other in the winter of 1861; his mother, Mary Jones, whose journal records her horror as the only world she knows vanishes before her; Nancy Johnson, an enslaved woman who loses her family’s stores of food and precious household belongings to rampaging Union troops; Aaron A. Bradley, a fugitive slave turned attorney and provocateur who defies whites in the courtroom, on the streets, and in the rice fields; and the Reverend Tunis G. Campbell, who travels from the North to establish self-sufficient black colonies on the Georgia coast.

Deeply researched and beautifully written, Saving Savannah is a powerful account of slavery’s long reach and the way the war transformed this southern city forever....

With its sweeping, inclusive view of American history, Created Equal emphasizes social history–including the lives and labors of women, immigrants, working people, and minorities in all regions of the country–while delivering the familiar chronology of political and economic history. By integrating the stories of a variety of groups and individuals into the historical narrative, Created Equal helps connect the nation’s past with the student’s present.

 

Created Equal explores an expanding notion of equality and American identity—-one that encompasses the stories of diverse groups of people, territorial growth and expansion, the rise of the middle class, technological innovation and economic development, and engagement with other nations and peoples of the world.

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With its inclusive view of American history, Created Equal, Brief Edition, Volume Two emphasizes social history--including the lives and labors of women, immigrants, working people, and minorities in all regions of the country--while delivering the basics of political and economic history. In this streamlined version of Created Equal, the authors have preserved the chronological framework and strong narrative thread, the rich tapestry of people and events, the engaging and illuminating stories, and the Interpreting History features of the original text, but have sharpened the presentation and prose condensing each chapter by 25 percent....

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In this masterful portrait of life in Savannah before, during, and after the Civil War, prize-winning historian Jacqueline Jones transports readers to the balmy, raucous streets of that fabled Southern port city. Here is a subtle and rich social history that weaves together stories of the everyday lives of blacks and whites, rich and poor, men and women from all walks of life confronting the transformations that would alter their city forever. Deeply researched and vividly written, Saving Savannah is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the Civil War years....

This is both the story of a little girl growing up in Christiania, Delaware, in the 1950s and the history of an American crossroads. Wedged between two dramatically different extended famiiles, she tries to make sense of the social signifiers that crosscut even this tiny village in New Castle County- differences between blacks and whites, men and women, Presbyterians and Methodists, migrants from Appalachia and migrants from New England, and members of the business class and the working class. In the proccess she chronicles a series of economic and social changes that span the last four hundred years - the transformation of Native-American hunting grounds into a colonial port on the busy Christina River; the decline of that port when it was bypassed by canals and railroads; and finally, the emergence of a thriving service and consumer economy in early twenty-first-century northern Delaware....