Balancing Evils Judicously

In 1828, Zephaniah Kingsley, a wealthy planter and former slave trader, published an extraordinary booklet, "A Treatise on the Patriarchal. Or Co-operative System of Society," which Dr. Stowell identifies as "the first formal articulation of proslavery ideology by a Floridian after Florida became an American territory in 1821."

Daniel Stowell carefully assembles all of Kingsley's writings on race and slavery to illuminate the evolution of his thought. The intriguing hybrid text of the four editions of the treatise clearly identifies both subtle and substantial differences among the editions. Other extensively annotated documents show how Kingsley's interracial family and his experiences in various slaveholding societies in the Caribbean and South America influenced his thinking on race, class, and slavery.

Daniel W. Stowell is director and editor of the Lincoln Legal Papers, a project of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency in Springfield, and author of "Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863-1877" (1998).

2-35717, Daniel W. Stowell, University Press of Florida, Copyright 2000, hardcover, 127 pages, 0813017335, 6" x 9 1/4"