Israel on the Appomattox

A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s through the Civil War

by Melvin Patrick Ely

Thomas Jefferson condemned slavery but denied that whites and liberated Black people could live together in harmony. Jefferson's young cousin Richard Randolph and ninety African Americans set out to prove the sage of Monticello wrong. When Randolph died in 1796, he left land for his formidable bondman Hercules White and for dozens of other enslaved people. There they could build new lives as free persons alongside white neighbors and other Black people who had gained their liberty earlier.

Fittingly, the Randolph freedpeople called their promised land Israel Hill. They joined an existing free African American population in Prince Edward County; Ely's story encompasses free Black life throughout the area.

Black Israelites and other free African Americans established farms, plied skilled trades, and navigated the Appomattox River in freight-carrying "batteaux." Hercules White's son Sam and other free Black people bought and sold boats, land, and buildings, and they won the respect of whites. →

Ely captures a series of remarkable personal and public dramas: free Black and white people do business with one another, sue each other, work side by side for equal wages, join forces to found a Baptist congregation, move west together, and occasionally settle down as man and wife. Even still-enslaved Black people who face charges of raping or killing whites sometimes find ardent white defenders.

Yet slavery's long shadow darkens this landscape in unpredictable ways. After Nat Turner's revolt, county officials confiscate and auction off free Black people's weapons—and then vote to give the proceeds to the Black former gun owners. One Black Israelite marries an enslaved woman and watches, powerless, as a white master carries three of their children off to Missouri; a free Black miller bids for his own enslaved wife at a public auction. Proslavery hawks falsely depict Israel Hill to the nation as a degenerate place whose supposed failure proves Black people are unfit for freedom. The Confederate Army compels free Black men to build fortifications far from home, until Lee finally surrenders to Grant a few miles from Israel Hill.

Ely tells a moving story of hope and hardship, of Black pride and achievement. He shows us an Old South we hardly know, where ties of culture, faith, affection, and economic interest sometimes crossed racial barriers—a society in which, ironically, many whites felt secure enough to deal fairly and even cordially with free African Americans partly because slavery still held most Black people firmly in its grip. →

Praise

A remarkably rich story . . . . accentuate[s] the biracial—and tragic—aspects of Southern history.
Atlantic Monthly

Extraordinary—inspiring and heart-breaking, by turns.
John Demos, author of The Unredeemed Captive

Fascinating . . . . Ely's story is so rich and compelling . . . that it is sure to leave its mark on Southern history for years to come.
Washington Post Book World

A brilliant job of detective work.
Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello

In an astonishing act of historical research and imagination, Melvin Ely has recreated an entire world, [whose people] stand before us in sharp relief.
Edward L. Ayers, author of In the Presence of Mine Enemies

This complex, human story reveals both the possibilities and limits of revolutionary antislavery [and] destroys simplistic assumptions about a monolithic South.
Pauline Maier, author of American Scripture

This model work of local history succeeds in illuminating both individual lives and large structures, both limits and possibilities, and the result is a complex and arresting story that will make us all think harder about the history of race relations in the antebellum South.
Bancroft Prize jury

Rich with new insights on the dimensions of bondage and freedom. Ely's 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

[No one] has examined the quality of [free Blacks'] lives in the detail or with the sophistication of Melvin Patrick Ely.
Eric Foner, Los Angeles Times

Pathbreaking, superbly documented, seminal, and destined for controversy.
Gerald David Jaynes, author of Branches Without Roots

Extraordinary . . . a surprising and often heartening story of human struggle, personal dignity, and complex interracial cooperation in the deep shadow of slavery. . . . It poses striking possibilities for America's future.
James Oliver Horton, co-author of Hard Road to Freedom

Invite[s] us to imagine . . . the more optimistic vision of an America that might have been, one in which "generous energy" prevailed over bloodshed.
New York Times Book Review

Certain to generate controversy. . . . Fresh and provocative.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Masterful . . . . [A] wondrous array of primary sources and engaging prose.
Choice

An inspiring, informative, and uplifting story, . . . now available for everyone to read and savor.
Tennessee Tribune

An amazing cast of vividly drawn characters, Black and white.
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