Many historians of late have portrayed upper-class southerners of the antebellum period as inordinately aristocratic and autocratic. Some have even seen in the planters’ family relations the faint yet distinct shadow of a master’s dealings with his slaves. Challenging such commonly held assumptions about the attitudes and actions of the pre-Civil War southern elite, Jane Turner Censer draws on an impressive array of primary and secondary sources—including letters, diaries, and other first-person accounts as well as federal census materials and local wills, deeds, and marriage records—to show that southern planters, at least in their relations with their children, were caring, affectionate, and surprisingly egalitarian. Through the close study of more than one hundred North Carolina families, she reveals the adults to have been doting parents who emphasized to their children the importance of education and achievement and the wise use of time and money. The planters guided their offspring toward autonomy by progressively granting them more and more opportunities for decision making. By the time sons and daughters were faced with choosing a marriage partner, parents played only a restrained advisory role. Similarly, fathers left career decisions almost entirely up to their sons. Censer concludes that children almost invariably met their parents’ high expectations. Most of them chose to marry within their class, and the second generation usually maintained or improved their parents’ high economic status. On the other hand, Censer finds that planters rarely developed warm, empathetic relationships with their slaves. Even the traditional “mammy,” whose role is southern planter families was been exalted in much of our literature, seems to have held a relatively minor place in the family structure. Bringing to light a wealth of previously unassimilated information, North Carolina Planters and Their Children points toward a new understanding of social and cultural life among the wealthy in the early nineteenth-century South.

Mysterious nighttime lights near Brown Mountain in North Carolina's Pisgah National Forest have intrigued locals and visitors for more than a century. The result of a three year investigation, this book identifies both manmade and natural light sources--including some unexpected ones--behind North Carolina's most famous ghost story. History, science and human nature are each found to play a role in the understanding and interpretation of the lights people see.

A “masterly study” of how the business of homemade liquor shaped the history and culture of a region (Journal of American History). Homemade liquor has played a prominent role in the Appalachian economy for nearly two centuries. The region endured profound transformations during the extreme prohibition movements of the nineteenth century, when the manufacturing and sale of alcohol—an integral part of daily life for many Appalachians—was banned. Moonshiners and Prohibitionists: The Battle over Alcohol in Southern Appalachia chronicles the social tensions that accompanied the region’s early transition from a rural to an urban-industrial economy. It analyzes the dynamic relationship of the bootleggers and opponents of liquor sales in western North Carolina, as well as conflict driven by social and economic development that manifested in political discord—and also explores the life of the moonshiner and the many myths that developed around hillbilly stereotypes. “A much-needed contribution to our understanding of the complex social, economic, religious, and cultural issues underlying the prohibition impulse that swept the South between 1880 and 1920.” ―Journal of Southern History