Delta Sources and Resources ...134 Reviews

Delta Sources and Resources . 134 The King Biscuit Blues Festival (Helena, Arkansas) by LaDawn Fuhr Reviews . 137 Epps, Slavery on the Periphery: The Kansas-Missouri Border in the Antebellum and Civil War Eras, reviewed by Carl Moneyhon Nabors, From Oligarchy to Republicanism: The Great Task of Reconstruction, reviewed by William H. Pruden III Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition; and Harcourt, Ku Klux Kulture: America and the Klan in the 1920s, reviewed by Kenneth C. Barnes Cox, Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South, reviewed by Colin Woodward Ossad, Omar Nelson Bradley: America’s GI General, reviewed by Keith M. Finley Devlin, Remember Little Rock, reviewed by Misti Nicole Harper Ward, Out in the Rural, reviewed by Anthony B. Newkirk Bales, ed., Willie Morris: Shifting Interludes, reviewed by Barclay Key Osing, May Day, reviewed by Lynn DiPier Berard, Water Tossing Boulders: How A Family of Chinese Immigrants Led the First Fight to Desegregate Schools in the Jim Crow South, reviewed by Doreen Yu Dong Mitchell, Unnatural Habitats & Other Stories, reviewed by Janelle Collins Ferris, The South in Color: A Rural Journal, reviewed by Marcus Charles Tribbett Contributors . 158 ___________________________________________________________________________________ Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 82 Reviews Slavery on the Periphery: The in the creation of a world different from that Kansas-Missouri Border in the An- each brought to the confrontation. Addition- ally, she is influenced by the rhetoric of histori- tebellum and Civil War Eras. By ans concerned with social justice. Kristen Epps. (Athens, GA: Uni- Epps’s first two chapters address the efforts versity of Georgia Press, 2016. Pp. of white slave holders to turn this area into a xi-xvi + 265, list of illustrations, slave society between 1840 and 1854. These whites, mainly from the border states to the acknowledgments, introduction, east, clearly sought to replicate the slave system epilogue, abbreviations, notes, bib- with which they were familiar. They were liography, index. $59.95, hard- forced, however, to accommodate their ideal- ized system to the presence of native American cover) people and the area’s unique physical environment. The result was the creation of what Epps This book examines slavery and race rela- calls a small scale slave system in which slave tions along the border between modern Kansas holdings were relatively small and the economy and Missouri from 1820, the year of Missouri’s and culture similar but not totally alike that of statehood and Kansas’s existence as Indian Ter- other border slave states. This small scale sys- ritory, into the 1880s. tem was characterized by greater contact be- The author, currently tween masters and slaves, a more diverse an assistant professor employment of slaves outside of agriculture, rel- at the University of atively widespread slave hiring, greater slave Central Arkansas, mobility since slaves often had to accompany contends that the their masters on trips to town, and more slave story of slavery that marriages where couples belonged to different exists in the rich his- masters. Epps maintains that these circum- toriography of this stances made it possible for slaves to gain area has been consid- greater autonomy, a fact that led to increased ered tangential to the confrontation between masters and slaves. In political and ideologi- this interaction of masters, slaves, and the fron- cal conflicts associated tier, Epps sees the emergence of a regionally with “Bleeding Kansas.” This study rectifies unique form of slavery. While the system was that oversight by examining slavery per se and unique, the transformation allowed slavery, as giving voice to blacks as well as the whites ownership of individuals, to thrive on the fron- whose stories have constituted the history of tier where it and the peoples involved in the the area up to this point. Epps recognizes the system became a central part of the story of importance of historians of the Middle Ground Bleeding Kansas and the Civil War. Through in this work, accepting their hypothesis that this period, Epps considers the border between understanding the frontier requires attention to Missouri and Kansas to be virtually non-exis- the collisions that take place between races, tent. cultures, and even the environment and the re- After establishing the character of the bor- ciprocal impact of all of these on one another derlands and the slave system within them, ___________________________________________________________________________________ Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 137 Epps turns to the impact of the growing politi- counties showed a twenty-five percent decrease, cal crisis on the area in her next two chapters. reflecting the flight of slaves. In seeking their Almost immediately with the Kansas-Nebraska freedom and in military service, they reshaped Act the border line between the two areas society along the border and encouraged a new began to take a clearer shape as the pro-slavery definition of freedom. and anti-slavery forces contested control. How An epilogue carries the story into Recon- that contest would come out was not clear in struction and on to the 1880s and shows the 1854. As Epps points out, slavery already was problems of building a society in which blacks firmly entrenched on the Kansas as well as the continued to assert their freedom while many Missouri side of this political boundary. whites proved incapable of accepting that free- Through the early years of the conflict slave- dom. White supremacists existed in Missouri, holders controlled not only the territorial gov- as they had before the war, but Epps also points ernment, but also municipal and county out that, rather than comprising a bastion of governments in the Kansas Territory. Epps finds egalitarianism or individuality, many white that slavery continued to thrive through this Kansans were equally racist. Epps sees these period, although by 1857–1858, as the entry of years as a continuation of the struggle by Kansas into the Union as a free state became African Americans to gain control over their more certain, fewer slave owning families own lives by a people no longer slaves, but now moved into the Territory. Epps argues that this facing economic inequality and even continued certainty led to a destabilization of slavery along violence. the Missouri border demonstrated by the continued escape of slaves to freedom and increased --Carl Moneyhon activity by abolitionists in Kansas. Even before slavery was abolished on the Kansas part of the Ststs border, slavery was finished. On the eve of statehood in 1860 only two slaves remained in From Oligarchy to Republicanism: the Territory. Epps is not as clear how these fac- The Great Task of Reconstruction. tors worked in Missouri. Her argument rests pri- marily on anecdotal information and she fails By Forrest A. Nabors. (Columbia: to address the fact that slaveholding actually in- University of Missouri Press, 2017. creased significantly along the Missouri border xix + 399, preface, notes, bibliog- in the 1850s. raphy, index. $45.00, hardcover) In a chapter on the war years Epps observes, as have other historians, that in the border country slaves saw the war as the opportunity From Oligarchy to Republicanism: The to assert their freedom, an opportunity used Great Task of Reconstruction by Forrest A. fully to their advantage. Not only did they lib- Nabors is a thoughtful and thought provoking erate themselves, but they began, through mil- work. It is also an exasperating and frustrating itary service and other ways, to challenge the one that spends no small number of pages trying racist stereotypes prevalent among many to decide if it is a work of history or political whites. Still, through the war years they faced theory. While there can be no denying that it uncertainty because the chaos on the border, is well researched—up to a point, for the admit- and particularly guerilla bands, not only pre- tedly constricted parameters of the sources that sented opportunity but danger for the runaways. it mines, albeit to full value, are part of its prob- In this case, Epps shows with census figures how lem—its failure to go beyond its limited re- the black population in the western Missouri search trove, as well as its failure to provide any ___________________________________________________________________________________ Arkansas Review 49.2 (August 2018) 138 broader context for what it finds, make it a sin- impression. These instances, part of the almost gularly frustrating read. exclusive reliance on Republican contributions As history, it is a classic example of the old to Congressional debates, as well as the mem- adage that history is written by the winners. But oirs of the Leaders of the Reconstruction Re- while Nabors acknowledges that much of his publicans, inevitably ask the reader to accept work and most of the quotations are selec- political posturing as scholarly fact. That form tions—ones that he admits are often longer of presentation adds to the confusion, making than one usually expects—from the Congres- it hard, as previously noted, to determine sional Republicans who oversaw and imple- whether the book seeks to be a work of political mented Reconstruction, i.e. the war’s winners, theory or political history. the lack of any alternative ideas or interpreta- Indeed, if it is political theory, then the way tions, not to mention any context for the re- Nabors intermingles the Declaration of Inde- marks, results ultimately in an incomplete and pendence and the Constitution when he talks unbalanced picture. While this is his right, it is about the Constitution’s power to create a re- particularly frustrating for readers familiar with publican government that fosters equality may the period who undoubtedly will have questions be appropriate, but it is not good history.

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