Kenneth K Barlow

Semination Kenneth K Barlow

The question that has stood alongside of mankind since the beginning of man is whether or not he or she is a product of fate, a pre-written scripting of each life or Free Will and circumstance. Perhaps the single most important quality of man which makes him distinct from other animals is the ability to rationalize. Throughout eons of historical occurrences and conflict, each and every individual who has ever lived has formed a morality based in part on his or her ability to convince themselves of their own virtue and the subsequent virtue of their act or actions. Through the years which encompassed slavery and the Civil War, the line which delineated the chasm between master and slave would bridge prolifically. The 1860 Census would reveal that over 2,300,000 slaves existed in the southern states, a figure which comprised nearly 48% of the population. As expected, a large percentage of this slave population, an estimated 29 to 40 percent, was a product of forced miscegenation, a right claimed by the slave owners which they used with abandon. Klaus Vandenberg was no exception; Escaping the 1848 revolutions of Germany with his family, the Vandenbergs would settle in America and subsequently assimilate into the culture of the Old South and the practices of slavery and miscegenation. Within a generation the influences upon the lives of many in the city of Glenridge, Georgia as well was the future of those yet to be born could directly be traced to the Vandenbergs. However, there are deeply hidden secrets, those known only to the Vandenbergs that are dark and could quite possibly shape the future of those yet to be, for better or for worse. What is contained in the Vandenberg ledgers that could change the course of so many lives?