In 1850 a young country doctor stopped in for a “fine mess of melons” at a Mississippi homestead belonging to a poor white family:
Coroners’ inquests are some of the richest records we have of life and death in the nineteenth century South. As mortals, we all die, but we do not die equally. Race, place, gender, profession, behavior, and good and bad luck play large roles in determining how we go out of the world. Collecting extant coroners' inquests for the state of South Carolina between 1800 and 1900, "CSI: Dixie" provides rare glimpses into Victorian-era suicide, homicide, infanticide, abortion, child abuse, spousal abuse, master-slave murder, and slave on slave violence.
A project of the Center for Virtual History at the University of Georgia, CSI:D is delighted to thank the American Council of Learned Societies and the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts for their steadfast support.
eHistory was founded at the University of Georgia in 2011 by historians Claudio Saunt and Stephen Berry