Melvin Patrick Ely - Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil War

Acclaim for Melvin Patrick Elys
ISRAEL ON THE APPOMATTOX

Israel on the Appomattox [is one of] the first works that attempts to describe with precision the texture of day-to-day interaction across the color line. A remarkably rich story.

The Atlantic Monthly

[An] absorbing story. The value of this book lies in the many stereotypes the author has debunked.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Previous historians have described the limits of free blacks freedom. But none has examined the quality of their lives in the detail or with the sophistication of Melvin Patrick Ely in Israel on the Appomattox. A striking portrait. Ely hopes to shift the emphasis in the study of free blacks from disempowerment to accomplishment, and he goes a long way toward reaching this goal.

Los Angeles Times

A remarkable civics lesson in hope, strength, endurance and quiet courage that most will find important and uplifting.

Rocky Mountain News

Compelling, well-written, and thoroughly researched. The author knows Israel Hill and Prince Edward County inside and out, and his study is clearly a labor of love. [Ely] challenges many of our assumptions concerning white and black Southern life in the antebellum period.

Civil War Book Review

Ely brings to life the black personages who demonstrated that self-determination was possible in the South prior to the Civil War. A rare slice of history recounted by an uncommonly fastidious historian who is as passionate about the Hill as he is about the Israelites who dwelled there.

Black Issues Book Review

[Ely] explores as few others have done the meaning of independence and the role of faith and brotherly love.

The Decatur Daily

An astonishing act of historical research and imagination. Ely has given us the fullest and most humane account we have ever had of free black people.

Edward L. Ayers, author of In the Presence of Mine Enemies:
War in the Heart of America, 18591863

Israel on the Appomattox recovers a fascinating biracial worldright in the middle of the slave-based Old South. The book shows whites, enslaved blacks, and, most especially, freed blacks working, living, trading, competing, cooperating, fighting, and (at least occasionally) loving together, in and around a special little place called by the freedpeople Israel Hill. The story stretches from the Virginia of Thomas Jefferson to the Virginia of Appomattox Court House. And it is extraordinaryinspiring and heartbreaking by turns.

John Demos, author of The Unredeemed Captive:
A Family Story from Early America

This remarkable account is rich with new insights on the dimensions of bondage and freedom in the slave South. Elys meticulous research and elegant writing make the experience of reading it both a reward and a pleasure.

James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom

Israel on the Appomattox is a surprising and often heartening story of human struggle, personal dignity and complex interracial cooperation in the deep shadow of slavery. It upends traditional assumptions about race in the Old South and, in so doing, poses striking possibilities for Americas future.

James Oliver Horton,
coauthor of Slavery and the Making of America

The book unfolds as a revelation, and it contributes profoundly to the revision of our understanding of African American life in the nineteenth century.

Michael Kammen,
author of American Culture, American Tastes

Melvin Patrick Ely previously wrote a wonderfully original and significant book on the popular radio and television series Amos n Andy that upset a number of facile assumptions. He has now done exactly the same for Israel Hill. Once again we are indebted to him for enabling us to take a deeper look at aspects of our past and our culture we thought we fully understood.

Lawrence W. Levine,
author of Black Culture and Black Consciousness

A pathbreaking analysis of antebellum Virginia, Elys superbly documented discussion of race relations is seminal and destined for controversy.

Gerald David Jaynes, author of Branches Without Roots:
The Genesis of the Black Working Class in the American South, 18621882

Melvin Patrick Ely, a native of Richmond, Virginia, is Professor of History and Black Studies at the College of William and Mary. He is the author of The Adventures of Amos n Andy: A Social History of an American Phenomenon.

Israel on the Appomattox:
A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s
Through the Civil War

The Adventures of Amos n Andy:
A Social History of an American Phenomenon

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, OCTOBER 2005

Copyright2004 by Melvin Patrick Ely

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of
Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States
by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2004 .

Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Ely, Melvin Patrick.
Israel on the Appomattox : a southern experiment in Black freedom from the 1790 s
through the Civil War / Melvin Patrick Ely.st ed.
p. cm.
. Free African AmericansVirginiaPrince Edward CountyHistoryth
century.. Free African AmericansVirginiaPrince Edward CountySocial
conditionsth century.. Land grantsVirginiaPrince Edward County
History.. Prince Edward County (Va.)Historyth century. 5. Prince
Edward County (Va.)Race relations.. White family.. Free African
AmericansVirginiaPrince Edward CountyBiography.. Prince Edward
County (Va.)Biography.. Randolph, Richard, 17701796 . I. Title.
F.PE 49 2004
75.5 63200496073 dc
2003065976

eISBN: 978-0-307-77342-5

Author photographGene W. King

Maps by George Colbert

www.vintagebooks.com

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Vivien King Ely

my mother, my teacher