Murder at Montpelier: Igbo Africans in Virginia - Softcover

Chambers, Douglas B.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1604732466 ISBN 13: 9781604732467

Publisher: University Press of Mississippi, 2009

Synopsis

Murder at Montpelier: Igbo Africans in Virginia by Douglas B. Chambers. In 1732 Ambrose Madison, grandfather of the future president, languished for weeks in a sickbed then died. The death, soon after his arrival on the plantation, bore hallmarks of what planters assumed to be traditional African medicine. African slaves were suspected of poisoning their master. For Montpelier, his estate, and for Virginia, this was a watershed moment. Murder at Montpelier: Igbo Africans in Virginia explores the consequences of Madison's death and the ways in which this event shaped both white slaveholding society and the surrounding slave culture. At Montpelier, now owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and open to the public, Igbo slaves under the directions of white overseers had been felling trees, clearing land, and planting tobacco and other crops for five years before Madison arrived. This deadly initial encounter between American colonial master and African slave community irrevocably changed both whites and blacks. This book explores the many broader meanings of this suspected murder and its aftermath. It weaves together a series of transformations that followed, such as the negotiation of master-slave relations, the transformation of Igbo culture in the New World, and the social memory of a particular slave community. For the first time, the book presents the larger history of the slave community at James Madison's Montpelier, over the five generations from the 1720s through the 1850s and beyond. Murder at Montpelier revises many assumptions about how Africans survived enslavement, the middle passage, and grueling labor as chattel in North America. The importance of Igbo among the colonial slave population makes this work a controversial reappraisal of how Africans made themselves "African Americans" in Virginia. Douglas B. Chambers is a professor of history at the University of Southern Mississippi.

About this title

Book Description:

The story of the poisoning of President James Madison's grandfather and the solidarity of a slave community's traditions

From the Publisher:

-- The story of the poisoning of President James Madison's grandfather and the solidarity of a slave community's traditions

-- Involves a murder mystery with President James Madison's grandfather, witch doctors, and poisoning via traditional Igbo medicinal techniques

-- Reveals a fatal first encounter between colonial master and slave population in the New World

-- Connects written records and suppositions with established archaeology and ethnography of the Igbo

-- Demonstrates the strength of Igbo influence throughout Virginia

-- Traces the ways in which Igbo Africans became African Americans

About this edition

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1604732466
• ISBN 13: 9781604732467
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 325