Julia Floyd Smith gives an account of the evolution of plantation development in antebellum Florida. We might associate Florida with summer homes instead of slave cabins, but Smith tells us of a slave system firmly planted in the sunshine state, particularly in a cotton belt on the Florida Panhandle. The narrative includes a discussion of the conflict between white landowners and a small but striking community of free people of color.

Smith's work is well-written and well-researched. Her style is engaging, her scholarship impressive.

Those interested in plantation development in Florida might also consider the essays edited by Jane G. Landers, Colonial Plantations and Economy in Florida. The essays anthologized therein consider much of the period preceding Smith's study.

In Julia Floyd Smith's book Slavery and Rice Culture in Low Country Georgia, 1750-1860, the unique economic system that developed in the tidewater region along Georgia's Atlantic Coast is carefully evaluated. According to Smith, the geographic and economic nature of rice cultivation fostered the development of a distinctive plantation culture, the characteristics of which were drastically disparate from that of cotton, indigo and tobacco plantations within the same state.

Rice cultivation, being a highly labor-intensive enterprise, required the employment of a more efficient system of slave labor than that of the gang system, commonly found on upland cotton plantations. Instead of the gang system, coastal rice plantations utilized the task system, whereby slaves were assigned specific tasks each day "designed to produce effective performance and served as a convenient measurement of labor requirements on various projects." The precise workmanship necessary throughout various stages of successful rice cultivation was more suitable to a single slave as opposed to a gang of slaves. Smith asserts that the task system provided advantages for rice plantation slaves, who unlike their counterparts laboring in the gang system, did not have to work from sunup to sundown. Task system slaves were able to engage in leisure time or recreation once their task was completed.

Tidewater rice plantations cultivated suitable tracts of land carved out of coastal swamplands. The unique geographic limitations of tidewater farming fostered the development of larger plantations with dense slave populations requiring efficient managerial oversight. Smith contends that not only did slaves influence the methods used in rice cultivation, where she is in agreement with historian Daniel Littlefield, they also played a valuable role in effectively managing plantations. Smith challenges the stereotyped image of the uneducated and brutal overseer by painting a picture of an experienced manager, successfully directing the operation of plantations and slave labor. Interestingly, Smith contends that many tidewater plantation owners relied more on drivers, themselves slaves, than on white overseers. According to Smith, "Overseers came and left and seldom developed a close bond with the owner. Reliable and trusted drivers remained on the plantation for a lifetime and were of invaluable service to the owner."

In Slavery and Rice Culture in Low Country Georgia, 1750-1860, Julia Floyd Smith argues that the slaves of coastal Georgia exercised more religious freedom and autonomy than slaves in other parts of the South in addition to developing a distinctive African American culture. Smith states, "Negro slave preachers had to be cautious and stress a doctrine approved by whites..." Smith adds that in addition to stressing a doctrine approved by whites, black slave preachers also aided in controlling slaves. Smith has potentially overestimated the religious autonomy of tidewater slaves by neglecting to fully account for the fact that the religion exercised by these slaves was one restricted by whites. By closely regulating religious freedom among slaves, slave owners were able to exert substantial control over their slaves, encouraging them to seek salvation only in God's heavenly kingdom. Smith contends that slaves were aware of this fact, and actually went to painstaking lengths to meet secretly and conduct services.

A distinct African American culture developed in coastal Georgia. This culture reflected the African origins of the slaves, including song, dance, language and family relationships. According to Smith, "They have created a cultural blending of the African and Anglo-American to form a distinct low country society in which the contributions and traditions of both may be seen." Although the slaves of coastal Georgia undoubtedly created a unique culture, this culture must have been fragile and subject to disruption. Instead of simply describing the nature of the distinct culture established by slaves in coastal Georgia, it is necessary for Smith to discuss the factors that challenged the establishment of this culture and contributed to its inherent fragility.

Finally, Smith merely alludes to the "matriarchal concept of the family as an institution" in coastal Georgia. This statement requires further analysis by Smith. Historian Orville Vernon Burton describes the patriarchal nature of slave families inland from the Atlantic Coast in Edgefield, South Carolina. According to Burton the slave owner acted as the patriarch of the slave family. Smith needs to elaborate by possibly attributing the remoteness and seclusion of many of the tidewater plantations with their matriarchal nature, given that slave owners often did not reside on the plantation itself.

Julia Floyd Smith presents a significant contribution to the study of the South. Recognizing the distinctiveness of the economic and social makeup of coastal Georgia enhances previous assessments of plantation society and challenges historians to reassess certain aspects of the antebellum south.