Stono: Documenting and Interpreting a Southern Slave Revolt. Edited by Mark M. Smith. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, c. 2005. Pp. [xviii], 134. Paper, $14.95, ISBN 1-57003-605-5; cloth, $39.95, ISBN 1-57003-604-7.)
This book, a collection of primary and secondary sources, seeks to explain "the context, nature, meaning, and significance" of one of the largest slave revolts in the British North American colonies (p. xi). As Mark M. Smith openly acknowledges, this is an enormously difficult task. First and foremost, not all historians agree that the Stono rebellion of 1739 was really all that significant or meaningful (a fact that the editor of this collection ...