A Terrible Intimacy: Interracial Life in the Slaveholding South

Melvin Ely has scoured court records from Prince Edward county (VA) and identified several cases involving various crimes between black and white persons. The author carefully dissects the testimony and draws some conclusions about the context and the motives of each witness. He uses this to elucidate a much richer picture of the relationships between black and white in the era between 1820 and the emancipation. He illustrates how intimately blacks and whites lived with each other during the slavery epoch, and how some whites struggled to live up to their humanitarian ideals while never questioning their commitment to the institution of slavery. It is a nuanced analysis of what would otherwise be too dry and dense to sit through.