Book Review

This is not a run-of-the-mill, parochial, local study. Because North Carolina's African American community was connected so intimately to the Atlantic world, David S. Cecelski necessarily frames his study in ways that extend far beyond the North Carolina coastline. That Cecelski does so admirably makes this a fine book, refreshing in its scope even as it attends wonderfully to the details of local life. Cecelski sees his study as contributing toward a new scholarship that looks at slave labor and social life outside of the traditional venue of the southern cotton plantation, examining instead "the complex and important roles played by black watermen and sailors in the Atlantic maritime world."

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Free and slave black laborers were integral to antebellum North Carolina's maritime economy and society, and they held a bewildering array of jobs. Slaves piloted vessels, fished waters, and guided tobacco from foothills to port. Black maritime life was characterized by its fluidity and complexity, which affected race relations and degrees of slave independence and, most important, linked black watermen to the political currents of the Atlantic world. These connections were important in shaping slave political culture, helping them escape during the antebellum period, and they were critical to Union military success during the Civil War.

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