Encompassing American history from the eve of the Revolution to the first decades of our own century, Major Butler's Legacy is a history of five generations of a family sundered at its very core by the same institution of slavery that would lead the nation into the horror and destruction of the Civil War.
Jonathan Bryan (1708-88) rose from the obscurity of the southern frontier to become one of colonial Georgia's richest, most powerful men. Along the way he made such influential friends as George Whitefield and James Oglethorpe. Bryan's contemporaries, in terms of their large holdings of land and slaves, were markedly traditional and conservative. As Alan Gallay shows, Bryan was different. ...
This collection of 59 primary documents presents multiple viewpoints on more than four centuries of growth, conflict and change in Georgia. Drawn from such sources as government records, newspapers, oral histories, personal diaries and letters, the documents provide a voice to people's concerns.