Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery, and Freedom in the American South.(Review)

By Mark M. Smith (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1997) 303 pp. $40.00 cloth $16.95 paper

Mastered by the Clock is both delightfully original and somehow familiar. It is wonderful to read a work in the history of the nineteenth-century South in which Landes and Le Goff join Genovese as major influences,(1) It is exciting to read a work with such unique questions. Who had watches and clocks? When and how did they use them? How did clock time relate to nature's time in relations between plantation owners and slaves? How did clocks fit into the self-image of planters who wanted to be both modern innovators and traditional paternalists? The work ranges from a …