Israel on the Appomattox

Know about the book -

Israel on the Appomattox is written by Melvin Patrick Ely and published by Vintage. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 0307773426 (ISBN 10) and 9780307773425 (ISBN 13).

WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE A New York Times Book Review and Atlantic Monthly Editors' Choice Thomas Jefferson denied that whites and freed blacks could live together in harmony. His cousin, Richard Randolph, not only disagreed, but made it possible for ninety African Americans to prove Jefferson wrong. Israel on the Appomattox tells the story of these liberated blacks and the community they formed, called Israel Hill, in Prince Edward County, Virginia. There, ex-slaves established farms, navigated the Appomattox River, and became entrepreneurs. Free blacks and whites did business with one another, sued each other, worked side by side for equal wages, joined forces to found a Baptist congregation, moved west together, and occasionally settled down as man and wife. Slavery cast its grim shadow, even over the lives of the free, yet on Israel Hill we discover a moving story of hardship and hope that defies our expectations of the Old South.