'"Not guilty!" rang through the courtroom. Within days, the papers throughout the North and South were riddled with headlines about both injustice and justice served. It seemed this acquittal on charges of piracy for the import and sale of slaves was the final act that would trigger the impending Civil War, and Cal Lamar seethed with excitement over the thought of his South winning this fight as well. He had no idea that the fight he'd caused would kill more people than any other battle in history, and would unleash a carnage among brothers that would create a permanent scar in this nation's history"--[Page] 4 of cover.
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.
Commendation "A stunning tale of life in Georgia in the years leading up to the Civil War. The fictional characters are as real as the historical ones." Dr. John Duncan, Professor Emeritus, Armstrong Atlantic State University Synopsis Though Savannah's beautiful squares and architecture were already acclaimed in antebellum years, the city also struggled with dramatic challenges. A third of the population was enslaved. A steamship explosion killed many of its leading citizens. A local businessman tried to reopen the slave trade. And events were leading, inevitably, to civil war. Into this fascinating locale two young men are thrust: Joseph, a plantation owner's son, destined for a life of privilege, and Andrew, who is enslaved and being trained to manufacture bricks. But many things in Savannah were not as we might think, and the two boys become inseparable friends. They grow up to face the contradictions that surround them: the graciousness and the violence, the accomplishments and the tragedies. They help build some of the city's greatest architecture. They become ensnared in the illegal slave ship expedition of the Wanderer, which landed 400 Africans on the Georgia coast, tore apart Savannah, and edged the country closer to war. Both Joseph and Andrew face life-changing choices, made more difficult by the sweep of national politics. Can these two individuals maintain their friendship? And if so, at what price?
A richly illustrated, accessibly written book with a variety of perspectives on slavery, emancipation, and black life in Savannah from the city's founding to the early twentieth century. Written by leading historians of Savannah, Georgia, and the South, it includes a mix of thematic essays focusing on individual people, events, and places.
Captures the rich texture and color of Savannah as presented in history and photographs-the colonial capital, a deep-South antebellum town, a cotton port, a survivor of wars, and, perhaps most notably, a modern preservation success story. Includes one hundred fifty photographs, maps, and images.
Savannah's Midnight Hour argues that Savannah's development is best understood within the larger history of municipal finance, public policy, and judicial readjustment in an urbanizing nation. In providing such context, Lisa Denmark adds constructive complexity to the conventional Old South/New South dichotomous narrative, in which the politics of slavery, secession, Civil War, and Reconstruction dominate the analysis of economic development. Denmark shows us that Savannah's fiscal experience in the antebellum and postbellum years, while exhibiting some distinctively southern characteristics, also echoes a larger national experience. Her broad account of municipal decision making about improvement investment throughout the nineteenth century offers a more nuanced look at the continuity and change of policies in this pivotal urban setting. Beginning in the 1820s and continuing into the 1870s, Savannah's resourceful government leaders acted enthusiastically and aggressively to establish transportation links and to construct a modern infrastructure. Taking the long view of financial risk, the city/municipal government invested in an ever-widening array of projects--canals, railroads, harbor improvement, drainage-- because of their potential to stimulate the city's economy. Denmark examines how this ideology of over-optimistic risk-taking, rooted firmly in the antebellum period, persisted after the Civil War and eventually brought the city to the brink of bankruptcy. The struggle to strike the right balance between using public policy and public money to promote economic development while, at the same time, trying to maintain a sound fiscal footing is a question governments still struggle with today.
Black Savannah focuses upon efforts of African Americans, free and slave, who worked together to establish and maintain a variety of religious, social, and cultural institutions, to carve out niches in the larger economy, and to form cohesive black families in a key city of the Old South.
Spanning more than one hundred miles across rice fields, salt marshes, and seven rivers and creeks, the Charleston & Savannah Railroad was designed to revolutionize the economy of South Carolina's lowcountry by linking key port cities. This history of the railroad records the story of the C&S and of the men who managed it during wartime.
Orphaned Mark Browning was only twenty when he renounced his father's fortune and sailed to Savannah, his mother's birthplace . . . and the home of two remarkable women. The first is Eliza McQueen Mackay, his mentor's beautiful wife, whom Mark loves with a deep, pure love that can never be spoken. The other is lovely young Caroline Cameron, whose life is blighted by a secret that has tormented her grandparents for half a century—a secret that affects Mark more closely than he imagines. Desiring one woman, loved by another, Mark must confront the ghosts of a previous generation, and face the evil smoldering hate, before he can truly call Savannah his home.
Now, Eugenia Price presents the final chapter in the lives of the Brownings, the MacKays, and the Stileses . . . three families torn by the Civil War and by inner battlefields where the legacies of the past clash with the uncertainties of the future. "A stirring payoff!"--Kirkus Reviews.
