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A
Stranger and a Sojourner
Peter Caulder, Free Black Frontiersman
in Antebellum Arkansas
Billy D. Higgins
The
life of a pioneering African American community leader is
turned upside down on the eve of the Civil War.
Co-winner
of the 2005 Ragsdale Award
A
Stranger and a Sojourner: Peter Caulder, Free Black Frontiersman
in Antebellum Arkansas tells the extraordinary story
of Peter Caulder, a free African American settler in the Arkansas
Territory. After serving as a rifleman in the war of 1812,
Caulder established a community of free-born African Americans
in northern Arkansas and was largely accepted by his white
neighbors until an 1859 expulsion law forced the community
to flee the state and settle in Missouri.
Like many frontier people, Peter Caulder was unschooled and
signed his name only with a mark. To document such a man’s
life, and to determine how he thrived within a slave society
and came to join a free black backwoods community, Billy Higgins
has skillfully interwoven oft-neglected primary sources—many
of which are reproduced here—from around the country;
and through the information revealed in censuses, tax records,
sutler’s account books, army returns, folk stories,
land warrants, traveler’s journals, and newspaper notices,
a fascinating—and groundbreaking—account of Caulder,
his family, his friends, and his community has emerged.
“Highly
profitable reading. . . . This is an important work that is
based upon incredible research and written with clarity, grace,
and sensitivity. The story of Caulder, his family, and his
associates is not only inherently interesting, but it is also
a story with broad historical implications.”
—Willard
B. Gatewood, Alumni Distinguished Professor of history emeritus
at the University of Arkansas and author of Aristocrats
of Color: The Black Elite, 1880—1920 and
Smoked Yankees and the Struggle for Empire: Letters from Negro
Soldiers, 1898—1902.
“Higgins
has performed a remarkable achievement as well as a great
service by piecing together the life of Peter Caulder, an
obscure but fascinating figure whose biography gives us a
new perspective on the racial aspects of the antebellum Arkansas
frontier.”
—S.
Charles Bolton, author of Arkansas,
1800–1860, and co-editor of A
Whole Country in Commotion, writing in the Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette
“Billy
Higgins, detective-historian of remarkable merit, has put
together one of the more intriguing stories I have ever read
about the Antebellum South in all its complexity. Peter Caulder,
an illiterate free black, defied all our generalizations about
race as he served with distinction in the United States Army,
repeatedly crossed the color line, and became an Arkansas
yeoman farmer, thriving and respected by white neighbors until
he fell victim of new discriminatory legislation on the eve
of the Civil War. It is essential reading for students of
African-American and Southern history.”
—Don
Higginbotham, professor of history at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of George Washington:
Uniting a Nation
“Higgins
presents a more complex and nuanced picture of life for blacks
in the antebellum South in this portrait of a black frontiersman
who lived and thrived in the Arkansas Territory. . . . Using
numerous historical resources, Higgins reconstructs Caulder’s
life as an independent, though engaged, citizen of the territory.
He also portrays the number of other free blacks who lived
in tentative peace and self-sufficiency among white neighbors
until the murder of a local white man, the expulsion of free
blacks, and the threat of enslavement forced Caulder to flee
Missouri. This well-researched book adds new dimension to
portraits of the lives of blacks before and after the Civil
War.”
—Booklist
(American Library Association)
“A
painstakingly reconstructed account of a remarkable life,
one that reveals the interwoven frontiers of race, geography,
and culture in nineteenth century America. And a worthy reminder
that history is always more complicated than we thought.”
—H.
W. Brands, distinguished professor of history at Texas A &
M
University and author of The Reckless Decade: America
in the 1890s
“Meticulously
researched and solidly written, Higgins’ book succeeds
as a look into some of the best—and the worst—of
the settling of Arkansas. Anyone interested in local history
will want to add it to his bookshelf.”
—Grant
Tolley, Southwest Times Record (Fort Smith, Arkansas)
Billy
D. Higgins has been a professor of history at the
University of Arkansas at Fort Smith since 1993. This is his
first book. His essays on African American culture before
and after the Civil War have appeared in Freedom’s
Odyssey: African American History Essays from Phylon
and the Arkansas Historical Quarterly.
$19.95,
paper (s)
978-1-55728-805-9 | 1-55728-805-4
2005
2004
6" x 9"
370 pages
$34.95, cloth (s)
978-1-55728-777-9 | 1-55728-777-5
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