Hugh Davis and His Alabama Plantation

Provides insights into important facets of Alabama’s antebellum history
 
After practicing law in Marion, Alabama, for 14 years, Hugh Davis became a cotton planter in 1848 and was eminently successful during the Fifties, last and richest of the Antebellum decades. His place was Beaver Bend, more than 5,000 acres of blackbelt land on the Cahaba River ten miles out from Marion.
 
Hugh Davis and his Alabama Plantation tells the whole story of his career as a planter: the early years of apprenticeship and debt (and the setting out, in one month, of 750 yards of roses along the road); the middle years of prosperity on the land and the market places; the dreary end, a stroke of apoplexy, war, and destruction of the system on which Beaver Bend was built.