Death of an Overseer: Reopening a Murder Investigation from the Plantation South

In May of 1857, the body of Duncan Skinner was found in a strip of woods along the edge of the plantation near Natchez, Mississippi, where he worked as an overseer. Although a coroner's jury initially ruled his death to be accidental, an investigation organized by planters from the community
concluded that he had been murdered by three slaves acting under instructions from John McCallin, an Irish carpenter.
Now, almost a century and a half later, Michael Wayne has reopened the case to ask whether the men involved in the investigation arrived at the right verdict. Part essay on the art of historical detection, part seminar on the history of slavery and the Old South, Death of an Overseer is, above all,
a murder mystery--a murder mystery that allows readers to sift through the surviving evidence themselves and come to their own conclusions about who killed Duncan Skinner and why.

Author: Michael Wayne
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 03/08/2001
Pages: 272
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.87lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.61d
ISBN: 9780195140040

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 02/15/2001 pg. 247
Booklist 02/15/2001 pg. 1100
Library Journal 05/15/2001 pg. 142
Choice 01/01/2002 pg. 950

About the Author

Michael Wayne teaches history at University College, the University of Toronto. His first book, The Reshaping of Plantation Society, won multiple prizes, including the Francis Butler Simkins Award of the Southern Historical Association.

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