A Stranger and a Sojourner: Peter Caulder, Free Black Frontiersman in Antebellum Arkansas

Rating:
Summary: A VALUABLE ADDITION
Review: Billy D Higgins presents information in this book that broadens our understanding of US history. He tells the life story of Peter Caulder, a man of color, who grew up in an integrated rural community in Marion County, South Carolina where free black and white yeomen lived and cooperated in apparent harmony. Peter, his father, and several friends were recruited into the local milita unit as substitutes for more affluent neighbors and then into the US Rifle Regiment. These people of color served in an integrated army unit during the War of 1812 and, in Caulder's case, long after.

Caulder remained in the army for fourteen years, spending most of his time at frontier posts in northwestern Arkansas Territory. After leaving the army, he became a landowner and taxpayer in a free black enclave on the White River in Arkansas.

Unfortunately Higgins as created his book out of very limited documentation by padding fact with speculation, repitition, and extraneous information. Peter Caulder,like most of the people around him, was illiterate. The written record of his life is scantily recorded in census counts, army records and reports, sutlers' accounts, tax rolls, and the accounts of the few literate people with whom he came in contact. The book is awash in "may have", "might have", "perhaps", and "probably". The factual material is sufficient for a scholarly article, but not a book.

I still recommend it. In addition to telling Caulder's story, the book describes military life on the southeastern frontier and supplies interesting glimpses of US-Indian interaction in the wake of the Louisiana Purchase. Like NEGRO COWBOYS by Durham & Everett, A STRANGER AND A SOJOURNER compels the reader to rearrange the furniture in his attic of preconceptions.