title: Black Life on the Mississippi: Slaves, Free Blacks, and the Western Steamboat World
author:  Thomas C. Buchanan 
description: This is social and economic history at its best.--Mark M. Smith, <i>The Journal of American History</i><br /><br /><br /><br />A valuable contribution to the ever-expanding literature on American slavery and freedom. . . . The book deserves a wide readership.--<i>Civil War History</i><br /><br /><br /><br />Buchanan has done more than fill a void in the historiography. He has helped push everyone who studies the history of enslavement in the United States to consider the peculiar institution as an ever-changing, growing, moving institution that was never the same thing twice.--<i>North Carolina Historical Review</i><br /><br /><br /><br /><i>Black Life on the Mississippi</i> is an excellent and important account of a part of southern history and African-American history that has unaccountably been poorly served. It would work well in a variety of classroom settings. . . . This is a work that historians in a variety of fields, the general public, and even the late Mark Twain could read with profit and interest.--<i>H-Net Reviews</i><br /><br /><br /><br />In this thoroughly researched and elegantly written book, Buchanan recreates the lives of the tens of thousands of African-Americans who labored on the Mississippi and its tributaries. . . . Thanks to [his] prodigious investigation and eloquent prose, the real-life Jims who peopled the river banks and towns have at long last had their stories told.--<i>American Historical Review</i><br /><br /><br /><br />Makes a welcome and significant contribution to the history of slavery and African Americans with this interesting and well-researched work.--<i>Journal of the Early Republic</i><br /><br /><br /><br />By exploring the relationship between slavery, freedom, and America's greatest river, Buchanan sheds new light on the ways African-Americans resisted slavery and developed a vibrant culture and economy within its restrictions.--<i>The Courier</i><br /><br /><br /><br />[Buchanan] highlights the paradoxical nature of the Mississippi and the mobility afforded river workers. . . . An important addition the literature on U.S. slavery.--<i>Journal of African American Studies</i><br /><br /><br /><br />Thomas Buchanan's <i>Black Life on the Mississippi</i> examines the little-known world of African American steamboat workers during the nineteenth century. Deftly spanning the periods of slavery and postwar emancipation, the book sheds light on both the trying conditions under which the steamboat workers labored and the contributions they made to the larger political struggles of the Civil War era. This is a great read for steamboat buffs no less than students of African American history.--Joseph P. Reidy, Howard University<br /><br /><br /><br />A terrific read. . . . This is social and economic history at its best.--<i>Journal of American History</i><br /><br /><br /><br />Draws on a remarkable range of sources.--<i>Arkansas Historical Quarterly</i><br /><br /><br /><br />Buchanan has woven a fascinating narrative of life, crime, culture, and work in the river industry.--<i>Journal of Southern History</i><br /><br /><br /><br />A solid work of scholarship. . . . A well-illustrated and attractively produced volume.--<i>Western Historical Quarterly</i><br /><br /><br /><br />A long, sharply focused look at the life of African American river workers both during and after slavery.--<i>Missouri Historical Review</i><br /><br /><br /><br />Buchanan has indeed illuminated how valuable the Mississippi steamboat industry was to the African American community.--<i>Journal of Southern History</i><br /><br /><br /><br />For nineteenth-century African Americans, western rivers were arteries of the hellish Cotton Kingdom <i>and</i> highways to freedom. Crafted from prodigious and hard-won archival evidence, <i>Black Life on the Mississippi</i> is a vivid testimonial to the tensions and triumphs of African American life in the pan-Mississippi region.--W. Jeffrey Bolster, author of <i>Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail</i><br /><br /><br /><br />Thanks to Buchanan's prodigious investigation and eloquent prose, the real-life Jims who peopled the river's banks and towns have at long last had their stories told.--Douglas R. Egerton, <i>American Historical Review</i><br /><br /><br /><br />Buchanan's research is impeccable. . . . Unreservedly an important book--vital for students of the Mississippi and relevant far more widely.--<i>Journal of American Studies</i><br /><br /><br /><br />Offers trenchant insights into the stark conditions of everyday life along the Mississippi.--<i>Louisiana History</i><br /><br />
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  # Old Times on the Mississippi
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Mark Twain
  
  
  This page copyright © 2002 Munsey's.
  
  
  http://www.munseys.com
  
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  ### I.
  
  
  
  
  
    
  WHEN I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my
  
  
  comrades in our village on the west bank of the Mississippi River. That
  
  
  was, to be a steamboatman. We had transient ambitions of other sorts,
  
  
  but they were only transient. When a circus came and went, it left us
  
  
  all burning to become clowns; the first negro minstrel show that came
  
  
  to our section left us all suffering to try that kind of life; now and
  
  
  then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us
  
  
  to be pirates. These ambitions faded out, each in its turn; but the
  
  
  ambition to be a steamboatman always remained.
  
  
    
  Once a day a cheap, gaudy packet arrived upward from St. Louis, and
  
  
  another downward from Keokuk. Before these events had transpired,