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6. VIRGINIA - Uncovering Slavery at Tower Hill - ALAN TAYLOR (HOUR ONE) 100126
Published 1 day, 20 hours ago
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1899 ROSEWELL PLANTATION, GLOUCESTER COUNTY VIRGINIA
Uncovering Slavery at Tower Hill
Alan Taylor, author of Tower Hill: A Plantation on the Edge of Rebellion: The two-time Pulitzer Prize winner examines Virginia's Blow family—Samuel, Richard, and George—across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Samuel built wealth dispossessing indigenous land; Richard amassed a fortune through wartime smuggling at South Quay, international commerce, and transatlantic slaving. George managed Tower Hill plantation, continuously debating his father over severe soil exhaustion, overcropping, and scientific agricultural methods. Taylor exposes the pervasive physical violence sustaining slavery, the self-pitying illusions of planters, and debt-fueled financial practices underlying the economic facade of elite Virginia gentility. (6)