Acknowledgments
This brief notice can in no way adequately depict the contributions others
have made to this project or convey my appreciation to them. I am indebted: to
the interlibrary loan staffs of the Library of Virginia (formerly Virginia State
Library) and Davis Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
for their efficient transmittal of the microfilm reels central to my research; to
the microform reading room staffs of the two libraries for making time spent
there as productive and comfortable as the nature of the work could permit; to
Don Higginbotham, Mike Lienesch, Marla Miller, Nancy Nelson, and John
Woolverton, who without hesitation agreed to read in its entirety an early
and unwieldy version of this study and by their thoughtful responses played
a major and formative role in its ongoing revision; to Bob Calhoun and the
unindentified reader for the University of North Carolina Press, who treated
the project with great seriousness and critical acumen; to the Triangle Early
American History Seminar colleagues, who discussed three of the chapters at
monthly meetings and provided scholarly companionship and friendship in
addition to their probing assessments; to Mark Thompson, for his patient
and expert computer instruction; to Peter Coclanis and History Department
colleagues for their sustaining encouragement; to Bill Blythe, whose untimely
death has meant an incalculable loss to all who value humane learning, were
inspired by his lively curiosity, and were enriched by his friendship; to my
editors at the University of North Carolina Press, Lewis Bateman and David
Perry, and their assistants, for their insistence upon excellence in every phase
of book production; to the Blythe Family Fund and the James Sprunt Fund,
for their generous publication support; and, most important, to Nancy, whose
love, care, and unstinting loyalty made possible staying the course.