In this revised and expanded edition of Anna Kingsley's remarkable life story, Daniel Schafer draws on new discoveries to prove true the longstanding rumors that Anna Madgigine Jai was originally a princess from the royal family of Jolof in Senegal. Captured from her homeland in 1806, she became first an American slave, later a slaveowner, and eventually a central figure in a free black community. Anna Kingsley's story adds a dramatic chapter to the history of the South, the state of Florida, and the African diaspora.

"Captures in rich detail the competition between the Confederates and Unionists, blacks and whites, and civilians and soldiers in the region. A fascinating and illuminating story told through compelling and persuasive prose."--Aaron Sheehan-Dean, author of "Why Confederates Fought"

"A fast-paced social history of the Civil War in northeastern Florida."--John David Smith, editor of "Black Soldiers in Blue"

When the Civil War finally came to North Florida, it did so with an intermittent fury that destroyed much of Jacksonville and scattered its residents. The city was taken four separate times by Federal forces but abandoned after each of the first three occupations. During the fourth occupation, it was used as a staging ground for the ill-fated Union invasion of the Florida interior, which ended in the bloody Battle of Olustee in February 1864. This late Confederate victory, along with the deadly use of underwater mines against the U.S. Navy along the St. Johns, nearly succeeded in ending the fourth Union occupation of Jacksonville.
Writing in clear, engaging prose, Daniel Schafer sheds light on this oft-forgotten theatre of war and details the dynamic racial and cultural factors that led to Florida's engagement on behalf of the South. He investigates how fears about the black population increased and held sway over whites, seeking out the true motives behind both the state and federal initiatives that drove freed blacks from the cities back to the plantations even before the war's end.
From the Missouri Compromise to Reconstruction, "Thunder on the River" offers the history of a city and a region precariously situated as a major center of commerce on the brink of frontier Florida. Historians and Civil War aficionados alike will not want to miss this important addition to the literature.

A controversial figure for his views on manumission and his unorthodox marital arrangements, Zephaniah Kingsley Jr. (1765-1843) is mostly known today for his Fort George Island plantation in Duval County, Florida, now a National Park Service site, and for his 1828 pamphlet, A Treatise on the Patriarchal System of Society, that advocated just and humane treatment of slaves, liberal emancipation policies, and granting rights to free persons of color. Paradoxically, his fortune came from the purchase, sale, and labor of enslaved Africans. In this penetrating biography, Daniel Schafer vividly chronicles Kingsley's evolving thoughts on race and slavery, exploring his business practices and his private life. Kingsley fathered children by several enslaved women, then freed and lived with them in a unique mixed-race family. One of the women--the only one he acknowledged as his "wife" though they were never formally married--was Anta Madgigine Ndiaye (Anna Kingsley), a member of the Senegalese royal family, who was captured in a slave raid and purchased by Kingsley in Havana, Cuba. A ship captain, Caribbean merchant, and Atlantic slave trader during the perilous years of international warfare following the French Revolution, Kingsley sought protection under neutral flags, changing allegiance from Britain to the United States, Denmark, and Spain. Later, when the American acquisition of Florida brought rigid race and slavery policies that endangered the freedom of Kingsley's mixed-race family, he responded by moving his "wives" and children to a vast agricultural settlement in Haiti that he established for free persons of color. Kingsley's assertion that color should not be a "badge of degradation" made him unusual in the early Republic. His unique life is revealed in this fascinating reminder of the deep connections between Europe, the Caribbean, and the young United States.

William Bartram denied their existence; history buried their stories. In his famous and influential book Travels, the naturalist William Bartram described the St. Johns riverfront in east Florida as an idyllic, untouched paradise. Bartram's account was based on a journey he took down the river in 1774. Or was it? Historians have relied upon the integrity of the information in William Bartram's Travels for centuries, often concluding from it that the British (the colonial power from 1763 to 1783) had not engaged in large-scale land development in Florida. However, the well-documented truth is that the St. Johns riverfront was not in a state of unspoiled nature in 1774; it was instead the scene of drained wetlands and ambitious agricultural developments including numerous successful farms and plantations. Unsuccessful settlements could also be found, William Bartram's own foundered venture among them. Evidence for the existence of these settlements can still be found in archives in the United Kingdom and in the family papers of the descendants of British East Florida settlers and absentee landowners. So why did Bartram choose to erase them from history? Was his insistence on a pristine paradise in Travels based on an early expedition that he and his father, the botanist John Bartram, conducted in 1764-65? Was his distaste for development a result of bitterness and shame over his own failed settlement? Daniel Schafer explores all of these questions in this intriguing book, reconstructing the sights and colorful stories of the St. Johns riverfront that Bartram rejected in favor of an illusory wilderness. At last, the full story of William Bartram's famous journey and the histories of the plantations he "ghosted" are uncovered in this eminently readable, highly informative, and extremely entertaining volume.