No Chariot Let Down: Charleston's Free People on the Eve of the Civil War

by Michael P. Johnson

Book Overview

These thirty-four letters, written by members of the William Ellison family, comprise the only sustained correspondence by a free Afro-American family in the late antebellum South. Born a slave, Ellison was freed in 1816, set up a cotton gin business, and by his death in 1861, he owned sixty-three slaves and was the wealthiest free black in South Carolina. Although the early letters are indistinguishable from those of white contemporaries, the later...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807815969
• ISBN13: 9780807815960
• Release Date: January 1984
• Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.1" x 9.3"