Unnamed Slave Owners

According to the novel's history of the place that became Jackson, the "Anglo-Saxon pioneer" (81) was followed by wealthier settlers who built the "river towns" like Vicksburg and Natchez, "men with mouths full of law, in broadcloth and flowered waistcoats, who owned Negro slaves and Empire beds" (82). The planter who was the first man to plant cotton in the region - "someone brought a curious seed into the land . . . and now vast fields of white" covered the land (83) - also belongs in this group.