A Black Sugar Planter in the Old South

A review of Andrew Durnford, A Black Sugar Planter in the Antebellum South by David O. Whitten, (Transaction Publishers, 1995).

In the year 1800 the Viceroyalty of New Spain was still intact, and Louisiana still part of the Spanish Empire. So, too, was Mexico, Texas, all the Southwest of today’s America, north to Kansas and clear to the West Coast up to present-day Washington. In 1801 Spain in the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso ceded the portion of these lands comprising the later Louisiana Purchase to France but continued to administer them. In 1803 Jefferson bought the Louisiana Purchase lands from France. In 1812 Louisiana became a sovereign State within the United States. A border dispute rose between Louisiana and Tejas (Texas), the Spanish Empire’s province adjacent to Louisiana. With the Treaty of Adams-Onis in 1819, Spain and the United States agreed the Sabine River would be the border.