In "Slave Breeding: Sex, Violence, and Memory in African American History", Gregory Smithers traces the history of coercive reproductive and sexual practices in the Antebellum South, as well as reactions and denials of the practice of slave breeding by historians throughout the twentieth century. Smithers goes into great detail about "Mandingo", a novel that is explicitly about slave breeding. In the novel, Warren Maxwell, owner of the Falconhurst plantation, reiterates time and again that cotton is not a reliable crop and the real money is in breeding "niggers". Over the course of the novel, four female slaves give birth (and another miscarries), and in each instance the Maxwells give the slaves a dollar and a new dress. The Maxwells, particularly the elder Warren, wax poetic about slave breeding, arguing that while slaves with white (or "human" as the Maxwells put it in the novel) blood are smarter and better looking, purebred Mandingos are among the strongest and most submissive slaves. While Hammond Maxwell is more interested in satisfying his own sexual appetites and preparing his prize slave, Mede, for fights, Warren Maxwell spends much time planning how to mate various slaves to produce the best "suckers". There is much discussion over the virility of male slaves, such as when the cook, Lucretia Borgia, and Warren Maxwell have a discussion about who the father of her baby is: