This quarter, I assigned Liberty, Equality, Power in the U.S. history survey. I might try another book next year because it’s getting to be too expensive for the students. Anyway, it’s a solid book. Reading over the chapter on "The Old South, 1790-1850," I stumbled over this bit, describing the deep South: "Slaves under the task system won the right to cultivate land as ‘private fields'—farms of up to five acres on which they grew produce and raised livestock for market. There was a lively trade in slave-produced goods, and by the late 1850s slaves in the lowcountry not only produced and exchanged…
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