1. ORVILLE VERNON BURTON is a professor of history and sociology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he was appointed "University Distinguished Teacher/Scholar." He is the author of more than a hundred articles and the author or editor of seven books (one of which is on cdrom), including In My Father's House Are Many Mansions: Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina.
2. Thank you to Georganne Burton, my colleague Max Edelson, and my research assistant Masatomo Ayabe, each of whom gave this address critical readings. I also appreciate the assistance of Phillip Carpenter and Matthew Cheney and the support of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Research Board.
3. 1 Charles Joyner, Down By the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984), xvi.
4. 3