Them Dark Days

Them Dark Days: Slavery in the American Rice Swamps (1996) is a historical non-fiction book by British author and historian William Dusinberre chronicling the horrifically atrocious conditions faced by American slaves in the antebellum period on rice plantations in South Carolina and Georgia. While offering a broad historical and cultural look at slavery and rice production in the American South, Dusinberre individuates his story by grounding it in the lives of slaves on rice plantations owned by three separate families: the Manigaults, the Butlers, and the Allstons.

As far back as 3,000 years ago in West Africa, humans begin to cultivate rice for consumption. Rice crops tend to thrive in warm, wet climates but unlike in Asia and Africa are not native to the Americas. After encountering rice in Africa, 15th and 16th-century Portuguese explorers introduce the crop to native tribes in the Caribbean and South America, where the climate is well-suited to rice cultivation.

The question of how rice cultivation began in the colonies in the American South is unsettled. Cargo records indicate that a bushel of rice arrived in the South Carolina colony as early as 1672, though other rice shipments might have predated it. Whatever the case, rice becomes prevalent enough by 1691 that the South Carolina Assembly passes a law allowing colonists to use rice as tax payments. Before long, Charleston and Georgetown become wealthy port towns into which slaves kidnapped from West Africa begin to pour.



While rice cultivation continues on the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina on a relatively modest scale for the next half-century, it isn't until around 1760 that landowners adopt the larger, more ambitious plantation model for rice. The labor involved in clearing swampland into a rice plain is enormous, falling on the backs of slaves, most of them African but some of them American Indian. Over time, rice planters begin to rely almost solely on African slaves due to the American Indians' susceptibility to smallpox and other diseases, which is exacerbated by such backbreaking labor. First, the trees must be chopped down and burned, and the roots removed from the swampy ground. Some plantation owners outfit oxen with special boots allowing them to pull out the roots without getting stuck in the mud and dying. Others, however, expect slaves to work the stumps and roots from the swampland themselves. Next, the slaves erect a massive embankment around the plain. According to historical archaeologists, the amount of dirt moved along the East Branch of South Carolina's Cooper River for the purpose of rice plantations would total three times the volume of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

By 1765, rice exports to Europe total 40,000 tons in a single year, making planter families like the Manigaults rich. By 1844, Charles Manigault owns multiple rice plantations around Charleston, South Carolina and the Island Region of Chatham, Georgia. To contrast the privileged lives of Manigault and his family with those of the slaves he exploits, Dusinberre describes the numerous benefits that come with wealth in the antebellum South. For example, Manigault and other planters hire the absolute best artists from around the world to paint family portraits. When Yankee soldiers liberate these plantations during the Civil War, many of the newly freed slaves remove the portraits and throw them outside to rot in the rain. Manigault complains that this shows "their hatred of their former master and all his family."

This attitude is in keeping with Manigault's distrust of his slaves, which is overwhelming. He cannot understand why one day his slaves will produce 12 bushels of the rice and the next day only six. Any number of factors could cause this inconsistency, but Manigault is convinced that his slaves are intentionally working to subvert his orders and harm his business. He thus directs his brutal overseer A.R. Bagshaw to drive the slaves ever harder and with even greater malice.



Conditions are similarly grim on the Butler family's rice plantation, located on an island in Georgia's Altamaha River and purchased by Pierce Butler in 1790. A veteran of the American Revolution and a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, few planters work harder to enshrine the institution of slavery in America's founding document than Pierce. He is a major proponent of counting slave populations for the purpose of a state's Congressional apportionment, leading to the Three-Fifths Compromise which gives Southern states a disproportionate amount of political power, given that slaves cannot vote. Upon Butler's death in 1822, the plantation is inherited by two of his grandsons. In 1838, co-heir Pierce Mease Butler travels to the family plantation to convince his abolitionist-leaning wife, Frances, that his slaves are well-treated. But what Frances sees appalls her. She assiduously documents the horrific conditions in which the slaves toil in a diary that is published in 1963.

Finally, there is South Carolina State Senator Robert Allston, a rice planter. With 690 slaves working 9,500 acres of land across five plantations, Allston is the eighth largest slaveholder in US history.

According to the African American Review academic journal, Them Dark Days is "a deeply researched, acutely analyzed, powerfully written study of the antebellum plantations on the rice coast."