Louisiana Sugar Plantations During the Civil War

A gifted raconteur, Roland sets the scene where the Louisiana cane country formed "a favored and colorful part of the Old South, " and then unfolds the series of events that changed it forever: secession, blockade, invasion, occupation, emancipation, and defeat. Though sugarcane survived, production did not match prewar levels for twenty-five years. Roland's approach is both illustrative of an earlier era and remarkably seminal to current emancipation studies. He displays sympathy for plantation owners losses, but he considers as well the sufferings of women, slaves, and freedmen, yielding a rich study of the social, cultural, economic, and agricultural facets of Louisiana's sugar plantations during the Civil War.