Inside the Natchez Trace Collection

When it was acquired by the Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin in 1986, the Natchez Trace Collection was one of the great unexplored treasures of southern history. Its plantation records, bank correspondence, songbooks, and family letters, among many other gems, combine to form a cornucopia of regional history. Now seven noted southern historians act as guides through this still largely untapped resource. Each examines one facet of the collection, covering such topics as slavery, women's roles, the Old Southwest, Jacksonian politics, sectional conflict, and the position of businessmen and entrepreneurs in the antebellum period.