Rascals on the antebellum Mississippi:African American steamboat workers and the St Louis hangings of 1841.

Abstract

Explores the process by which four Afro-American steamboat workers of the Mississippi River system, who were hanged in Saint Louis, Missouri on July 9, 1841, created a rascal identity. Description of the execution; Views of slaveholders on the river system; Economic structure of the slave economy; Role of Afro-American mariners on the river system; Variety of ways in which slaves and free Afro-Americans resisted the slave regime.