What was antebellum life like for the two communities of people-one
white and one black-who lived and worked on a plantation on the
Eastern Shore of Maryland? Thomas Marsh Forman was in his early
twenties when he returned from the Revolutionary War to take over
the proprietorship of Rose Hill plantation from his father. The
estate lay alongside the Sassafras River in Cecil County, on
Maryland's Eastern Shore. Rose Hill was a product of its historical
moment, a moment in which men like Forman acted on their belief
that the future prospects of the country required a continuation
not only of their energy, their skills, and their desire to improve
the lives of Americans but also of the slave economy they had done
so much to shape. A focused study of this one plantation, The
People of Rose Hill illuminates the workings of the entire
plantation system in the border region between the end of the
Revolution and the approach of the Civil War. Lucy Maddox looks
closely at the public and private lives of the people of Rose Hill,
who labored together in a profitable agricultural enterprise while
maintaining relationships with one another that were cautious,
distant, sometimes secretive, and often explosive. Making extensive
use of the letters of wife, Martha Ogle Forman, Maddox places the
experiences of Rose Hill's inhabitants (enslaved and free) within
the context of the cultural, economic, and political history of the
state. Piecing together the scattered information in these
documents, she offers readers fascinating insights into life and
labor on the plantation, from grueling daily work schedules to
menus for elaborate dinners and teas. Her account includes
comparative analyses of family structures and social practices
within the Forman family and in the community of enslaved workers.
Individual sections profile thirty-eight of the fifty enslaved
people at Rose Hill, identifying, as far as possible, that person's
primary work responsibilities, family connections, and history at
the plantation, thus giving each a recognized place in the larger
history of plantation slavery in the Upper South. Maddox's
discussion of Rose Hill extends to the places around it where the
slave culture of the plantation found confirmation and support:
churches, law courts, social gatherings, agricultural fairs and
societies, the parlors and sitting rooms of the Eastern Shore
elite. The People of Rose Hill is a fascinating look at the
intersection of the constricted world of the plantation with the
larger world of early America.
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