Zephaniah Kingsley Jr. and the Atlantic World - by Daniel L Schafer (Paperback)

About the Book

This biography tells the story of Zephaniah Kingsley Jr., a
controversial figure who owned a Florida plantation in the early
American Republic

Book Synopsis

Florida
Book Awards, Silver Medal for Florida Nonfiction

Florida
Historical Society Charlton Tebeau Award

Florida
Historical Society Stetson Kennedy Award

A biography of a controversial patriarch of a mixed-race family



A
controversial figure for his views on manumission and his unorthodox
marital arrangements, Zephaniah Kingsley Jr. (1765-1843) is mostly known
today for his Fort George Island plantation in Duval County, Florida,
now a National Park Service site, and for his 1828 pamphlet, A Treatise on the Patriarchal System of Society,
that advocated just and humane treatment of enslaved persons, liberal
emancipation policies, and granting rights to free persons of color.
Paradoxically, his fortune came from the purchase, sale, and labor of
enslaved Africans.

In this penetrating biography,
Daniel Schafer vividly chronicles Kingsley's evolving thoughts on race
and slavery, exploring his business practices and his private life.
Kingsley fathered children by several enslaved women, then freed and
lived with them in a unique mixed-race family. One of the women--the only
one he acknowledged as his "wife" though they were never formally
married--was Anta Madgigine Ndiaye (Anna Kingsley), a member of the
Senegalese royal family, who was captured in a slave raid and purchased
by Kingsley in Havana, Cuba.

A ship captain, Caribbean
merchant, and Atlantic slave trader during the perilous years of
international warfare following the French Revolution, Kingsley sought
protection under neutral flags, changing allegiance from Britain to the
United States, Denmark, and Spain. Later, when the American acquisition
of Florida brought rigid race and slavery policies that endangered the
freedom of Kingsley's mixed-race family, he responded by moving his
"wives" and children to a vast agricultural settlement in Haiti that he
established for free persons of color.

Kingsley's
assertion that color should not be a "badge of degradation" made him
unusual in the early Republic. His unique life is revealed in this
fascinating reminder of the deep connections between Europe, the
Caribbean, and the young United States.

Review Quotes

"Kingsley
is indeed a puzzling figure, and a fascinating one. He was an adventurer, slave
trader, businessman and gimcrack social philosopher. . . . Schafer brings this
forgotten man to life."--Wall Street Journal

"A
comprehensive, accurate, and objective biography of this prominent early
Floridian, effectively situating the story within a larger narrative involving
antebellum social mores, plantation management, and the economics of slavery."--Library
Journal

"Brings
to life the man Kingsley with all his flaws, contradictions and genius for success,
placing him in the context of the turbulent times known as the 'Age of
Revolution' that intermittently convulsed both sides of the Atlantic."--Florida
Times-Union

"A
deeply researched biography of a truly exceptional but complex man whose life
both reflected and helped to redefine the changing Atlantic worlds that he
occupied."--The Historian

"Illustrates
just how complex, interconnected and surprising the eighteenth-century Atlantic
world could be for the men and women who circulated around it and helped shape
it. . . . [A] richly textured and well-written biography."--Slavery and
Abolition