J. C. Powell’s The American Siberia; or, Fourteen Years' Experience in a Southern Convict Camp

This volume is J. C. Powell’s The American Siberia; or, Fourteen Years' Experience in a Southern Convict Camp, first published in 1891 (this copy being an early British release by Gay & Bird).

Captain J. C. Powell served as the commander of Florida’s state convict camps for 14 years. Written directly from his firsthand observations, the book provides a frank and unsparing account of the post-Reconstruction convict-lease system, where state prisoners—predominantly African American men—were leased out to private companies for brutal manual labor in turpentine camps, phosphate mines, and railroad construction.

The phrase "American Siberia" was coined by contemporary northern journalists and reformers to liken the penal camps of the American Deep South to the brutal tsarist labor camps of exile in Siberia.

While Powell intended to defend aspects of his management, the detailed descriptions of harsh penal discipline, sweat labour, hound-tracking escapes, and severe punishment unwittingly documented one of the most controversial chapters of post-Civil War Southern history—what historians now frequently refer to as "slavery by another name."

Copies bearing the Gay & Bird London imprint are particularly interesting collectible items; Gay & Bird specialized in bringing notable late-19th-century American titles and exposés to the British reading public.

150mm x 200mm x 35mm

Binding repaired; new end papers; 14 plates; some cropped (I’m not sure if this is complete). Some marks on pages; lacking half title page; 355 pages; 2 pages of adverts.

R1,250