Great book about Thomas Chaplin and His history on St. helena Island. Really gets you to know what life was like in antebellum South.

A captivating account of antebellum life on a Sea Island cotton plantation. This is a genuine depiction of innocent people pressed into unremitting labor under the most onerous conditions right here in the United States of America! It's not "Gone With the Wind." If you believe the Civil War wasn't about slavery, read this! Tombee House still stands today. Just drive to the southern end of St. Helena Island and look seaward. Read the book, then go visit the house -- it's a haunting experience!

Tombee provides an amazingly immediate view of the life of a "typical" slaveholder and cotton plantation owner in the years leading up to the Civil War. The book is divided into two parts, Rosengarten's commentary on Chaplin's life, and Chaplin's diary. If you read only one part, read Rosengarten's. You can feel the heat and the haze of the steamy low country in summer as the slaves toil and Chaplin frets over his life and finances. And you watch the story unfold knowing the Civil War is about to stamp out slavery and a tragic way of life. This is great history!