“Fear God and Walk Humbly”: The Agricultural Journal of James Mallory, 1843-1877

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Description

James Mallory used to be an uncommon Southerner. Most inhabitants of the Old South, especially the obvious folk, devoted more time to leisurely activities–drinking, gambling, hunting, fishing, and just loafing–than did Mallory, a workaholic agriculturalist, who experimented with new plants, orchards, and manures, in addition to the contemporary farming equipment and techniques. A Whig and a Unionist, a temperance man and a peace lover, ambitious yet caring, business-minded and progressive, he supported railroad construction in addition to formal education, even for girls. His cotton production–four bales per field hand in 1850, nearly twice the average for the most productive cotton lands in southern Alabama and Georgia–tells more about Mallory’s steady work habits than about his class status.

But his most obvious eccentricity–what gave him reason to be remembered–used to be that nearly on a daily basis from 1843 until his death in 1877, Mallory kept a detailed journal of local, national, and frequently foreign news, agricultural activities, the weather, and especially events involving his circle of relatives, relatives, slaves, and neighbors in Talladega County, Alabama.
Mallory’s journal spans three major periods of the South’s history–the boom years before the Civil War, the upward push and collapse of the Confederacy, and the period of Reconstruction after the Civil War. He owned slaves and raised cotton, but Mallory used to be never more than a hardworking farmer, who described agriculture in poetical language as “the best [interest] of all.”

 

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