This image offers an idealized version of the life of enslaved people living on a Georgia cotton plantation. It appeared in a widely circulated magazine published in Boston in the first half of the 1800s, a time when increasing literacy encouraged the production of more books, newspapers, and other print material. Such illustrations were common until photography, still in its infancy, became more commonplace and photographic equipment more reliable and portable. By 1858, the year this image appeared, the American South was in many respects isolated from the rest of the nation, with a distinctly different economy and culture defined by the area’s use of enslaved labor.