This book deals with the westward migration of the planter families of the seaboard South in the years before the Civil War. Cashin examines the decision of families to migrate, the effects migration had on the family life of the planters, and the way old ties were maintained and new ones formed. The emphasis is on child-rearing and women's lives in the Old Southwest (Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana), and Cashin has drawn on rich archival sources to present moving portraits of individual women caught in the flux of change.