Them Dark Days

The majority of Dusinberre's research is based upon a careful reading and close analysis of a variety of published sources. Dusinberre's description of life and death at Gowne between 1833 and 1865 constitutes one of the most fully realized and horrific portraits of slavery on a single North American plantation ever written ... Them Dark Days is often so combative and polemical in its interpretation that its author must have expected to provoke controversy. I hope and expect that students of the subject will be reading and debating Them Dark Days for years to come. * Robert Olwell, University of Texas at Austin, Slavery & Abolition, Vol. 18, No. 2, August '97 *
The sheer weight of evidence employed to support this thesis is impressive, and sobering ... as the first full-length study devoted to a reassessment of this contentious and important topic, Dusinberre's work stands out as a significant achievement, a timely reminder that even modern assessments of slavery do not yet tell the whole story of 'them dark days' in the antebellum South. * S-M. Grant, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, The Historical Association 1997 *