Dear Forum Friends,  This is not a book review, but rather a
recommendation of Thomas C. Buchanan's book Black Life on the
Mississippi.  This is a book that I think would be an excellent addition
to your library.  I found it to be readable and well-researched.  The
subtitle of the book, Slaves, Free Blacks, and the Western Steamboat
World sets out the subject matter.  The book, though referencing Mark
Twain, does not deal specifically with the author or his particular
experiences with Blacks on the river.  However, the book is excellent
background material.
     The book examines two very different impacts the steamboat system
had on the enslaved.  The positive effects were significant.  For a
select few slaves and free blacks employment on steamboats offered a
chance to travel, be exposed to new ideas and information, and perhaps
to escape into the free states. Of those employed on steamboats (in a
survey of 93 boats in 1850 in St. Louis) 6% were slave and 12% free
Black.
      Those not lucky enough to be employed on the boats could still
benefit from them.  The network of Free Blacks and slaves moving up and
down the river system provided the opportunity to communicate with
others.  With forged papers and friends working on a boat, escaped
slaves could use the boats to flee slavery.  Black kitchen crews bought
the food for the boat.  Slaves along the river found markets for produce
grown in their gardens on the boats.  When the boats pulled in to wood
stations, local slaves converted their vegetables and game into cash.
      The downside for American slaves was that the steamboat was also
the mechanism for the "Inland Passage,"  the internal Diaspora of slaves
during the cotton boom.  Upwards of 30% of American slaves in the upper
states were shipped south at this time, never to see their families
again.  Coffles of slaves were chained together and "stored" on the deck
with the cargo during the trip to the slave markets in the deep south.
I'm sure you recall Sam's remark on seeing the coffle in Hannibal.
        The book includes chapters on black criminals who worked the
river and on the demise of the river system after the Civil War.  I
believe you will find the book gives you a greater understanding of Sam
Clemens's world.  It might be a source for those of you who teach and
lecture. It is a worthwhile purchase and read.

Terrell Dempsey