“By concentrating on a specific geographic area, and drawing extensively on primary materials (including census manuscript schedules, tax rolls, lien and mortgage records, probate records, and personal and governmental papers), Ronald L. F. Davis has made a major contribution to the ongoing debates about the transitions in the South resulting from the Civil War and the emancipation of the slaves. He provides important new information on the late antebellum economy as well as on the causes and consequences of the shift from slavery to sharecropping. Good and Faithful Labor is useful not only for its detailed analysis of the behavior of the freedmen and the planters in the postbellum era, but also for its discussions of numerous other issues relating to the social and economic patterns that developed. It will be necessary reading for all concerned with southern and Afro-American history.”– Stanley L. Engerman, University of Rochester