{"product_id":"the-journal-of-archibald-c-mckinley","title":"The Journal of Archibald C. McKinley","description":"\u003cp\u003eA valuable document from the Reconstruction era  The Journal of Archibald C. McKinley offers the modern reader a rare glimpse of daily life on Sapelo Island  Georgia  as seen through the eyes of an upper-class farmer. A descendant of Scottish settlers  Archibald McKinley was born in Lexington  Georgia  in 1842 and served as a Confederate officer during the Civil War. Just after the war  he began farming near Milledgeville  Georgia  and within a year had met and married Sarah Spalding  a granddaughter of Thomas Spalding  who had built his plantation empire on Sapelo Island. In 1869  the McKinleys moved to Sapelo to raise cotton  sugar cane  and other crops. The bulk of this journal is a sustained account of their sojourn on the island through 1876  before their return to Milledgeville. The brief  matter-of-fact entries that make up McKinleys journal focus mainly on the small occurrences that filled his days: farm work  hunting and fishing expeditions  sailing excursions  church services  changes in the weather  the disposition of his crops  the development of the Darien timber shipping trade. Scattered throughout  however  are intriguing references to dramatic events--shootings  trials  tensions between whites and the recently freed blacks--and to the processes of Reconstruction  as when McKinley notes that \"a company of Yankee soldiers\" had arrived at the penitentiary to ensure equal treatment of black and white convicts. The longest entry in the journal is a eulogy for a freedman named Scott  who  as McKinleys slave  had remained \"true as steel\" during McKinleys service in the Civil War. Editor Robert L. Humphries has included with the journal several of the McKinley family letters  written after Archibald and Sarah left Sapelo Island. In the introduction  historian Russell Duncan places the story in context  focusing on the larger events of Reconstruction as they pertained to Sapelo Island and to the relations between blacks and whites there.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44948090716213,"sku":"ByrdShop_0820311871","price":226.51,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780820311876.jpg?v=1770037591","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-journal-of-archibald-c-mckinley","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}