Happy dreams of liberty : an American family in slavery and freedom / R. Isabela Morales.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Morales, R. Isabela, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Townsend family.

Multiracial families--United States--History--19th century--Biography.

Multiracial families.

Freed persons--United States--History--19th century--Biography.

Freed persons.

Multiracial people--United States--History--19th century.

Multiracial people.

United States--Social conditions--19th century.

United States.

Multiracial families--United States--History--19th century.

Social conditions.

Genre:

Biographies

History

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xii, 319 pages : illustrations, genealogical tables ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University Press, [2022]

Summary:

"When Samuel Townsend died at his home in Madison County, Alabama, in November 1856, the fifty-two-year-old white planter left behind hundreds of slaves, thousands of acres of rich cotton land, and a net worth of approximately $200,000. In life, Samuel had done little to distinguish himself from other members of the South's elite slaveholding class. But he made a name for himself in death by leaving almost the entirety of his fortune to his five sons, four daughters, and two nieces: all of them his slaves. In this deeply researched, movingly narrated portrait of the extended Townsend family, R. Isabela Morales reconstructs the migration of this mixed-race family across the American West and South over the second half of the nineteenth century. Searching for communities where they could exercise their newfound freedom and wealth to the fullest, members of the family homesteaded and attended college in Ohio and Kansas; fought for the Union Army in Mississippi; mined for silver in the Colorado Rockies; and, in the case of one son, returned to Alabama to purchase part of the old plantation where he had once been held as a slave. In Morales's telling, the Townsends' story maps a new landscape of opportunity and oppression, where the meanings of race and freedom--as well as opportunities for social and economic mobility--were dictated by highly local circumstances. During the turbulent period between the Civil War and the rise of Jim Crow at the turn of the twentieth century, the Townsends carved out spaces where they were able to benefit from their money and mixed-race ancestry, pass down generational wealth, and realize some of their happy dreams of liberty."--Front jacket flap.

Contents:

This Happy, Free, and Flourishing Country

The Strangest Will He Ever Knew a Sensible Man to Make

Where Shall the Free Negro Go?

I Ain't Satisfied Here at All

Some One of Us Will Have It Good

Who Hasn't Yearned to Be Home?

Epilogue: So Much for Freedom.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 293-310) and index.

ISBN:

9780197531792

0197531792

OCLC:

1266253581