Slavery in Early South Carolina

Institute for Southern Studies
University of South Carolina
February 12-13, 1999

Friday, February 12, Capstone Conference Center, USC

8:30-10:00 -- SESSION 1/PETER WOOD'S BLACK MAJORITY: A SILVER JUBILEE
Moderator: Gary B. Nash, UCLA

Papers:

• Edward Cox, Rice University
• Peter Kolchin, University of Delaware
• Theodore Rosengarten, College of Charleston

Reply: Peter H. Wood, Duke University

10:00-10:30 -- BREAK

10:30-11:45 -- SESSION 2/DISCUSSION OF PHILIP MORGRAN'S SLAVE COUNTERPOINT
Moderator: Ira Berlin, University of Maryland

Paper: Peter A. Coclanis, University of North Carolina

Reply: Philip D. Morgan, College of William & Mary

11:45-1:00 -- Lunch Break

1:00-3:00 -- SESSION 3/THE CONVERGENCE OF CULTURES
Moderator: Charles Joyner, Coastal Carolina University

Papers:

• Medicine and Pottery: Creolization and African American Ethnogenesis in Early Carolina by Leland Ferguson, University of South Carolina
• The Entangled Roots of Carolinian Healing Practices: Creolization as Historical Process by Mary L. Galvin, The Ohio State University
• Between Cultures: African Cultural Brokers in the Colonial Southeast Prior to 1726 by David Rayson, University of Minnesota

Reply: Dale Rosengarten, College of Charleston

3:00-3:30 -- Coffee Break

3:30-5:00 -- SESSION 4/VOICES OF SLAVERY
Moderator: Walter Edgar, University of South Carolina

Papers:

• Mediating, Erasing, and Suppressing Black Voices in Late-Eighteenth-Century South Carolina by Vin Carretta, University of Maryland, College Park
• "The Said Slaves Say": The Strange Narrative of James Akin and the Cosmos of a Mid-Eighteenth Century Rice Planter by Robert Olwell, University of Texas at Austin

Reply: Douglas R. Egerton, LeMoyne College

Saturday, February 13, SCDAH History Center

8:30-10:30 -- SESSION 5/MAKING A SLAVE SOCIETY
Moderator: Larry E. Hudson, Jr., University of Rochester

Papers:

• "Is it possible that any of my slaves could go to heaven, and must I see them there?" White Women and Slave Ownership in Colonial South Carolina by Cara Anzilotti, Loyola Marymount University
• Reproducing Slavery in Colonial South Carolina by Jennifer L. Morgan, Rutgers University
• Pro- and Anti-Slavery in Early South Carolina by Gary L. Hewitt, Grinnell College

Reply: Meaghan N. Duff, Vanderbilt University

10:30-11:00 -- BREAK

11:00-1:00 -- SESSION 6/LABOR IN THE LOWCOUNTRY
Moderator: Mark M. Smith, University of South Carolina

Papers:

• Rice as Labor, Rice as Knowledge System by Judith Carney, UCLA
• "The Planter's Stock": Employing Slave Labor in the Colonial Lowcountry by S. Max Edelson, College of Charleston
• A Continuous Thread: Indigo and Slaves in Eighteenth-Century South Carolina by Virginia G. Jelatis, University of Minnesota

Reply: Joyce E. Chaplin, Harvard University

1:00-2:30 -- Lunch Break

2:30-4:30 -- SESSION 7/THE REVOLUTION AND BEYOND
Moderator: Jack P. Greene, Johns Hopkins University

Papers:

• "Self-Preservation is the First Law of Nature": Slavery and White Anxiety in Post-Revolutionary South Carolina by Stan Deaton, Georgia Historical Society
• Henry Laurens, the Revolutionary Generation, and Slavery by Daniel C. Littlefield, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Post-Revolutionary Charleston: African Americans' Ellis Island by James A. McMillin, Duke University

Reply: Robert M. Weir, University of South Carolina