William Dusinberre’s book Them Dark Days concentrates on the Gowrie plantation, the Butler Island plantation and, the Chicora Wood plantation as examples of the dark reality slavery had in the U.S. South. All three of these plantations are described by Dusinberre as “rice kingdoms”. He theorized that in the U.S. South these types of plantations were the most lucrative for planters and the most cruelly demanding to slaves. First and foremost in Dusinberre’s mind, gentleman planters such as Charles Manigualt, Pierce Butler and Robert Allston were capitalists driven to make profits not benevolent Southern patriarchs. In slave historiography, Dusinberre’s study of rice plantations brings forth a revisionist view that challenges the idea of Southern