‘This book offers compelling evidence that the rhetoric and realities of old age decline shaped enslaved people's self-understandings, relations with each other, and resistance to slavery as well as conflicts among enslavers. David Doddington demonstrates that no understanding of slavery can be complete without attention to old age.’
Corinne Field - author of Equal Adulthood: Gender, Race, Age, and the Fight for Citizenship in Antebellum America
‘Most previous research on slavery and age has focused on enslaved children. By moving the elderly to the forefront, Doddington further advances age as a worthwhile category of analysis, with fresh insights into the differences that the passing years made in the lives of the enslaved.’
Jeff Forret - author of Williams’ Gang: A Notorious Slave Trader and his Cargo of Black Convicts
‘In this masterful and timely study, David Doddington explores the perceptions and effects of physical aging on the institution of slavery in the antebellum South. Old Age and American Slavery alters our understandings of the life cycles of the enslaved as well as the exploitative power relationships that undergirded bondage.’
Damian Alan Pargas - author of Freedom Seekers: Fugitive Slaves in North America, 1800–1860
‘This engaging and vast range of historiography exposes fresh layers of the complex, conditional, and contested interactions that differentiated the lived experiences of enslavers vs. the enslaved. An essential read for all students of the history of enslavement in the United States.’
Thomas J. Davis
Source: Library Journal
‘In this innovative, wide-ranging and extremely thought-provoking book, David Doddington urges historians to think more explicitly about the process of ageing under American slavery. Arguing convincingly for ageing's relativity and contingency, he explores the concept from the perspectives of the enslaved and those who held them in bondage, finding a gap in the often rather crowded field of slavery historiography within which to make bold assertions about the nature of the regime more broadly. The book is eloquently written and well-structured throughout, using a vast array of primary evidence from a range of perspectives.’
Emily West
Source: The English Historical Review
‘This book is an important read for anyone interested in exploring how the experiences inherent to slavery and the power dynamics surrounding it could shift as one aged and/or physically and mentall declined. As Doddington suggests, considering age in conjunction with other personal characteristics, such as gender and race, allows him to paint a more individualistic and complex picture of slavery.’
Mia Edwards
Source: Slavery and Abolition
‘A brilliant exploration of how the sea has long mattered in the history of a country too often thought of largely in terms of its terrestrial orientation … This is a brilliant book by a senior scholar that substantially enhances an already stellar reputation … This should be read by anyone with an interest in Vietnam’s pre-twentieth-century history, and should absolutely be on the shelf of any scholar who studies Vietnam.’
George Dutton
Source: American Historical Review
‘Doddington demonstrates how others treated elderly Southerners, Black and white. But more importantly, he sought out the responses of those Southerners to what was happening, whether the loss of respect, physical decline, or interpersonal violence …The prospect of how one researches those voices is mind-boggling, and Doddington has made an invaluable contribution to the historiography.’
Craig Thompson Friend
Source: American Historical Review
‘A learned, well-written book that incorporates or critiques a wide range of academic literature on age, disability, gender, masculinity, and slavery studies; theories of identity and intersectionality; southern history; legal history; and other fields. Doddington’s primary sources include WPA slave narratives, fugitive slave autobiographies, civil and criminal court records, and plantation diaries. The author’s reliance on twentieth-century testimony of former slaves may seem counterintuitive, but he makes effective use of those sources to reveal the exploitative nature of slavery and the inter- and intraracial conflicts that came along with old age … a sobering assessment of the intersection of age and power in the antebellum South.’
Frederick Knight
Source: The Journal of the Civil War Era
