Black Life on the Mississippi: Slaves, Free Blacks, and the Western Steamboat World

All along the Mississippi — on country plantation landings, urban levees and quays, and the decks of steamboats — nineteenth-century African Americans worked and fought for their liberty amid the slave trade and the growth of the cotton South. Offering a counternarrative to Twain’s well-known tale from the perspective of the pilothouse, Thomas C. Buchanan paints a more complete picture of the Mississippi, documenting the rich variety of experiences among slaves and free blacks who lived and...