In recent years, historians writing about the early United States have produced a growing body of scholarship pertaining to the role of slavery in the development of modern business practices. The antebellum American South, known for its reliance on enslaved labor and a violent interstate slave trade, has received particular attention. In contrast to earlier scholars who described the southern plantation as “an ancient form of production,” several historians have portrayed plantations as large-scale, often innovative, businesses and the southern economy of the 1850s as vibrant.Footnote 1 These histories have emphasized the predominance of cotton as a US export, the sophistication of plantation accounting methods, and the emergent use of steam engines in sugar processing and cotton transportation. These histories have faced significant criticism, yet they have brought renewed interest to the subject of southern economic history and the broader history of the economic development of the United States.Footnote 2
Most of these works have centered around the institution of plantation slavery and the booming raw cotton industry of the antebellum South. Although the significance of plantation production to the southern economy is irrefutable, a broader view of the economic landscape yields additional, nonagricultural connections between slavery and nineteenth-century capitalist development. Alongside its cotton, sugar, and rice plantations, the antebellum South had numerous sites of industrial production. Mills, factories, distilleries, and mines were all part of southern industrialization during the nineteenth century.Footnote 3 In addition to the economic diversification that these sites of manufacturing represented, they directly connected the brutality of slavery to American industrialization by hiring and purchasing enslaved laborers to smelt iron, build railroads, and process tobacco.
While figuring less often in the recent histories of capitalism, industrial slavery has a rich historiographical tradition of its own. Among the pioneering scholarship in this field were Kathleen Bruce's studies, starting in the late 1920s, of the Virginia iron industry; Fletcher Melvin Green's research, published in the 1930s, on gold mining in antebellum North Carolina; and, in the 1960s, Otis Rice's study of coal mining in Virginia. Starting in the 1970s and continuing for decades, in books and articles, the work of Charles B. Dew illuminated the history of enslaved labor in the largest southern ironmaking organizations.
In the most prominent survey of the subject, Industrial Slavery in the Old South (1970), Robert Starobin defined the term as the employment of enslaved labor by “industries such as manufacturing, mining, lumbering, turpentine extraction, processing of agricultural crops, and the construction and operation of transportation facilities.”Footnote 4 Through extensive archival research, Starobin mapped the presence of industrial slavery, both urban and rural, across the antebellum South. According to his estimates, between 160,000 and 200,000 enslaved people were employed in southern industries during the 1850s. Although associated with only about 5 percent of the enslaved population in that decade, industrial slavery was nonetheless a wide-reaching phenomenon that pervaded nearly every facet of antebellum southern manufacturing.Footnote 5
Southern manufacturing waxed and waned across sectors from decade to decade.Footnote 6 Certain industries, such as textile manufacturing, weakened during the 1850s, following intense competition from northern factories.Footnote 7 The usage of enslaved labor across each sector similarly oscillated.Footnote 8 In many instances, the exact numbers of enslaved laborers per industry are unknown. The US Census did not include enslaved laborers in its sector-wide manufacturing reports, and the practice of “hiring out” enslaved people across both agricultural and industrial sectors further complicated population counts. What is certain, however, is that industrial slavery was a widespread element of the antebellum southern economy.
This research note aims to provide a guide to those interested in learning more about the field of industrial slavery. It begins with first-hand accounts drawn from the University of North Carolina's North American Slave Narratives, edited by William L. Andrews. Through narratives, autobiographies, biographies, and interviews, formerly enslaved people provide an incomparable level of insight into the brutality of slavery, and some comment directly on industrial slavery itself. This segment is followed by thematic sections on works of history, beginning with overviews of the subject, followed by eight industry-based categories: agricultural processing, artisanship, chemical manufacturing, government works, ironmaking, mining and extractive industries, textiles, and transportation. Organized alphabetically, these sectors are chosen both for their significance to industrial slavery and for the depth of associated literature. There exists a range of scholarly coverage across each of these categories, and the sections differ in size accordingly. By offering them in conjunction, we hope to provide readers with both breadth and depth of knowledge on the subject of industrial slavery in the antebellum South.
Though not exhaustive, the following bibliography features both major and minor works. The included annotations are intended to highlight the works’ connections to industrial slavery rather than to provide general summaries of their contents. In compiling this guide, we hope to offer readers and researchers a roadmap to better understand this important subtopic within the history of slavery in the United States. The subject presents many opportunities for use in future research, particularly within the growing field of literature on the intertwined histories of capitalism and slavery.
Firsthand Accounts in North American Slave Narratives
Some of the earliest published works to emerge on industrial slavery are firsthand sources.Footnote 9 During the nineteenth century, a significant number of enslaved and formerly enslaved individuals described their experiences through autobiographies, biographies, interviews, and narratives. Although many were self-published, others were published and distributed by abolitionists as a means of garnering support for the anti-slavery cause. These sources are by no means conclusive or wholly representative of the enslaved population, however, they provide a critical degree of insight into the history of industrial slavery, revealing the broad nature of the industries involved and the roles that enslaved people played within them. The firsthand accounts within this bibliography were chosen for their relation to a wide array of industrial sectors.
Many narratives that comment on industrial slavery are collected in the online database North American Slave Narratives, edited by William L. Andrews, and published by the University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/index.html). The database contains “all the existing autobiographical narratives of self-emancipated and formerly enslaved people published as broadsides, pamphlets, or books in English up to 1920.” It also includes lists of biographies and dictated narratives, as well as fictional accounts of enslavement, likely published to promote anti-slavery sentiment. Among the narratives collected in the database are the following:
Ball, Charles. Slavery in the United States. A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball, a Black Man, Who Lived Forty Years in Maryland, South Carolina and Georgia, as a Slave Under Various Masters, and was One Year in the Navy with Commodore Barney, During the Late War. New York: John S. Taylor, 1837. Electronic publication: Documenting the American South. University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1999. (https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/ballslavery/ball.html). Pp. xii, 517. Ball describes being hired out to work for the Navy in Washington, D.C. while enslaved (p. 27). Over the course of two years, Ball served as a cook aboard the USS Congress at the Washington Navy Yard.
Brown, Henry Box. Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown. Boston: Brown and Stearns, 1849. Reprint, United Kingdom: Lee and Glynn, 1851. Electronic publication: Documenting the American South. University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1999 (https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/brownbox/brownbox.html). Pp. vi, 61. Preface, appendix. Starting on page 17, Brown describes being taken to work in a tobacco manufactory in Richmond, Virginia. The 300-foot-long, three-story building employed 150 people, 120 of whom were enslaved. Brown details the working conditions of the factory, discussing the hours, machinery, and violence inflicted upon enslaved workers by an overseer.
Brown, William Wells. Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave. Written by Himself. Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, No. 25 Cornhill, 1847. Electronic publication: Documenting the American South. University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2001 (https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/brown47/brown47.html). Pp. 110. Brown describes being put on a steamboat, Missouri, before being hired out to the Missouri Hotel (p. 23). Brown notes that the hotel's staff was mostly enslaved, and that they were violently abused by the hotelkeeper (p. 24). Next, Brown recalls being hired out to Elijah P. Lovejoy, the publisher and editor of the St. Louis Times (p. 27). Brown worked in the printing office and worked the press. However, after a violent attack, he was hired out to work as a waiter on a steamboat owned by merchants at St. Louis (p. 31).
Douglass, Frederick. My Bondage and My Freedom. New York: Miller, Orton, and Mulligan, 1855. Reprint, United States: Michigan Publishing, 1857. Electronic publication: Documenting the American South. University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1999 (https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass55/douglass55.html). Pp. 468. In Douglass's second autobiographical work, he notes that he was hired to work in a shipyard in Baltimore while enslaved (p. 308). Although his initial placement was as a caulker, he was told to obey the command of around 75 carpenters. Douglass describes the violence that he and other Black apprentices suffered at the hands of the white apprentices at Gardiner's shipyard, and contextualizes the animosity displayed as representative of “the conflict of slavery with the interests of the white mechanics and laborers of the south” (p. 309). Other works in this bibliography, including Dew's Ironmaker to the Confederacy, have touched upon this conflict. After surviving a near-fatal attack at Gardiner's shipyard, Douglass describes working as a skilled caulker, first at another shipyard, then as a private contractor (p. 318). Despite being forced to turn over his wages, Douglass was eventually permitted to hire out his extra time, facilitating his escape from bondage.
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Boston: Anti-Slavery Project, 1845. Reprint, United States: Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, 2006 (https://www.google.com/books/edition/Narrative_of_the_Life_of_Frederick_Dougl/GR4ZEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PP1&printsec=frontcover). Pp. 127. Douglass's first autobiography discusses his experiences as an enslaved shipbuilder and caulker. His initial accounts were reiterated and expanded upon in his second work, My Bondage and My Freedom.
Drew, Benjamin. A North-Side View of Slavery. The Refugee: or the Narratives of Fugitive Slaves in Canada. Related by Themselves, with an Account of the History and Condition of the Colored Population of Upper Canada. J.P. Jewett and Co., 1856. Electronic publication: Documenting the American South. University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2000 (https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/drew/drew.html). Pp. xii, 387. Illus. This book contains over 100 narratives of formerly enslaved individuals who sought refuge in Canada, grouped by community. It was compiled and written by Benjamin Drew, a white abolitionist and journalist from Boston. In addition to the narratives, Drew includes descriptions of the communities themselves and the successful business activities of their inhabitants. Many of the interviewees reference industrial slavery, both firsthand and through the observation of others. The following list denotes many of these individuals. Supposedly, Drew often used pseudonyms to ensure the safety of the interviewees: Christopher Nichols (describes tending the drum of a wheat machine); Charles Peyton Lucas (blacksmith and journeyman); Williamson Pease (work in the gold mines); Aby B. Jones (her brother was a miller who earned wages in order to purchase their freedom); Christopher Hamilton (His father, mother, and siblings were sent to Mine Oburden, a lead mining site); Benjamin Miller (did business as a boot and shoemaker); J.C. Brown (describes work as a mason); William J. Anderson (hired to work on a steamboat as a steward and a cook); Henry Crawhion (hired to work on a steamboat); Edward Hicks (mentions the “salt-works at Kanawha,” though he avoids going there); Henry Blue (learned the trade of a blacksmith in Kentucky); Aaron Siddles (worked as a steward on a steamboat in order to buy his freedom); William Street (worked as a blacksmith and eventually owned his own blacksmithing shop); William A. Hall (mentions sugar farms and their dreadful treatment); William S. Edwards (mentions the trade of a tobacconist); James Smith (worked for half of the year at a gristmill); and John Hatfield (worked as a barber on a steamboat that traveled from New Orleans to Cincinnati.)
Hayden, William. Narrative of William Hayden, Containing a Faithful Account of His Travels for a Number of Years, Whilst a Slave, in the South. Written by Himself. Cincinnati, Ohio, 1846. Electronic publication: Documenting the American South. University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2001 (https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/hayden/hayden.html). Pp. 154. Illus. Hayden recounts being hired out for six years to work as a rope-maker for Elijah Craig in Georgetown (p. 24). In his free time, he earned money by selling fish and working for an inn-keeper. Later, he was hired out to another “rope-walk” in Lexington, Kentucky (p. 27). He also describes becoming the “foreman” of the factory (p. 38). Hayden later served as a barber in Georgetown and opened a sweet shop with a friend (pp. 45–46).
Jackson, Andrew. Narrative and Writings of Andrew Jackson, of Kentucky; Containing an Account of His Birth, and Twenty-Six Years of His Life While a Slave; His Escape; Five Years of Freedom, Together with Anecdotes Relating to Slavery; Journal of One Year's Travels; Sketches, etc. Narrated by Himself; Written by a Friend. Syracuse: Daily and Weekly Star Office, 1847. Electronic publication: Documenting the American South. University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2001 (https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/jacksona/jacksona.html). Pp. 120. Jackson describes being hired out to Stephen Claypoole for four years for turnpiking (p. 8). He notes that it largely entailed digging stumps, leading him to colloquially refer to it as “stump-piking.”
Lane, Lunsford. The Narrative of Lunsford Lane, Formerly of Raleigh, N.C. Embracing an Account of His Early Life, the Redemption by Purchase of Himself and Family from Slavery, and His Banishment from the Place of His Birth for the Crime of Wearing a Colored Skin. Published by Himself. Boston: Printed for the Publisher: J.G. Torrey, Printer, 1842. Electronic publication: Documenting the American South. University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1999 (https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/lanelunsford/lane.html). Pp. 54. Lunsford describes hiring his time from the woman who enslaved him in order to start a tobacco and pipe manufacturing business (p. 15). He paid her a price of $100-$120 per year, which allowed him to establish agencies and sell his tobacco under the name “Edward and Lunsford Lane.” He notes that this type of freedom for slaves was prohibited, but in Raleigh, it was “sometimes winked at” (p. 15).
Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy; Late a Slave in the United States of America. London: C. Gilpin, 5, Bishopsgate-Street, 1843. Electronic publication: Documenting the American South. University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1998 (https://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/grandy/grandy.html). Pp. vi, 72. Grandy recalls working as a “car-boy in the Dismal swamp,” transporting lumber (p. 11). Later, he transported merchandise on the Grand Canal between Norfolk, Virginia and Elizabeth City, North Carolina. Noting that his enslaver recognized his “industrious and persevering” nature, he had to pay him a significant portion of his earnings from freighting (p. 13). He continued to work in the lumber industry in Albemarle Sound, and later, returned to Norfolk. On page 35, Grandy describes the “severe” and brutal nature of canal-digging, which was performed by an enslaved labor force. This narrative provides deep insight into the use of industrial slavery in canals.
Pennington, James W. C. The Fugitive Blacksmith; or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington, Pastor of a Presbyterian Church, New York, Formerly a Slave in the State of Maryland, United States. London: Charles Gilpin, 5, Bishopsgate Without, 1849. Electronic publication: Documenting the American South. University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2001 (https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/penning49/penning49.html). Pp. xv, 87. After being placed in a shop alongside an accomplished enslaved blacksmith, Pennington learned the trade and became a skilled, “first-rate blacksmith” (p. 4). He worked in this profession between the ages of 12 and 21, before his escape from slavery.
Recollections of Slavery by a Runaway Slave. New York: The Emancipator, August 23, September 13, September 20, October 11, October 18, 1838. Electronic publication: Documenting the American South. University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2003 (https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/runaway/runaway.html). Pp. 5. The anonymous narrator of this article, published in a series of installments by the newspaper of the American Anti-Slavery Society, recounts the life of an enslaved person born in Charleston, South Carolina. In the section published on October 11, 1838, he describes being hired out to work on the Hamburg and Charleston Railroad. He depicts the contractors as egregiously violent and unbothered by workers’ injuries, as they considered the hired enslaved workers to be replaceable. The editor corroborates his experiences with another firsthand observation of the violent and dangerous conditions behind this railroad's construction.
Overviews of Industrial Slavery
The following works offer a general introduction to the concept and scope of industrial slavery in the antebellum southern United States. These sources cover many, if not all, of the rest of the topics in this bibliography, and would aid researchers who aim to gain a broad or preliminary understanding of the field.
Delfino, Susanna, and Michele Gillespie. Technology, Innovation, and Southern Industrialization: From the Antebellum Era to the Computer Age. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008. Pp. xiii, 215. Within the chapters of this anthology, leading scholars illustrate and explain the context in which innovation and technological growth occurred in the antebellum South. The book covers steamboats (p. 18), sugar production (p. 68), and textile manufacturing (p. 97); all industries that benefitted from the use of enslaved labor. It encapsulates both the southern adoption of northern technologies and distinctly southern innovations. It offers readers a strong historical background of southern technological development, crucial for understanding the basis of industrial slavery.
Downey, Tom. Planting a Capitalist South: Masters, Merchants, and Manufacturers in the Southern Interior, 1790–1860. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006 (muse.jhu.edu/book/16705).Pp. 279. Bibliog., index. Chapter 5, “A Change in Our Industrial Pursuits,” mentions the usage of enslaved labor by several southern factories while covering the varied southern viewpoints toward industrialization.
Eaton, Clement. The Growth of Southern Civilization, 1790–1860. New York: Harper, 1961. Pp. xvii, 357. Illus., ports., bibliog. Eaton provides a broad overview of southern industry in the antebellum period, from the plantations to the mills. Chapter 10, “The Growth of the Business Class,” pertains specifically to southern manufacturing and represents a useful industry overview for researchers of industrial slavery. This book covers many industries, including cotton mills and textile manufacturing, tobacco manufacturing, coal mining, gold mining, ironmaking, salt production, cordage and hemp manufacturing, and the hiring of enslaved labor.
Foner, Philip Sheldon, and Ronald L. Lewis, eds. Black Workers: A Documentary History from Colonial Times to the Present. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989. Pp. xv, 733. Bibliog., index.
Frawley, Michael S. Industrial Development and Manufacturing in the Antebellum Gulf South: A Reevaluation. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2019. Pp. xiii, 195. Illus., maps, bibliog., index. Offers a comprehensive, geographically oriented review of industrialization and manufacturing in the Gulf South. Asserts, with the help of a robust historiography, that southern industrialization has been overlooked historically due to comparisons with northern industrialization and propagation of the postbellum “Lost Cause” ideology. Frawley emphasizes the prevalence of enslaved labor across many of these industries, including railroad construction, and touches upon the financial incentives for its usage.
Goldin, Claudia Dale. Urban Slavery in the American South, 1820–1860: A Quantitative History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976. Pp. xv, 168. Bibliog., index. This book responds to Richard Wade's Slavery in the Cities, offering an economic study of the urban enslaved population of the antebellum South. Rather than arguing for the incompatibility of slavery with urban life, however, Goldin offers an alternative explanation for its decline towards the end of the antebellum period by hypothesizing that the demand for urban labor was far more elastic than the demand for plantation labor. This source includes relevant data on urban manufactories that utilized enslaved labor (such as Richmond's tobacco factories).
Green, Rodney D. “Quantitative Sources for Studying Urban Industrial Slavery in the Antebellum US South.” Immigrants & Minorities 5, no. 3 (Nov. 1986): 305–315 (https://doi.org/10.1080/02619288.1986.9974641). Tables, bibliog. In this article, Green addresses the limitations of tax and census records, offering a methodology for using them in tandem to more accurately estimate enslaved populations of the antebellum South. Green uses the case study of tobacco manufacturing in Richmond, Virginia to demonstrate his quantitative methodology for estimating the size of the enslaved labor force in industry. A useful approach that could be applied to other industry sectors; provides insights into the difficult task of quantifying industrial slave labor. Also see Rodney D. Green, “Black tobacco factory workers and social conflict in antebellum Richmond: Were slavery and urban industry really compatible?” Slavery & Abolition, 8, no. 2 (1987): 183–203.
Gudmestad, Robert. “Technology and the World the Slaves Made.” History Compass 4 no. 2 (Mar. 2006): 373–383 (https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-0542.2006.00313.x).
Inscoe, John C. Mountain Masters, Slavery, and the Sectional Crisis in Western North Carolina. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989. Pp. xvi, 348. Illus., bibliog., index. Introduces antebellum-era slavery in the western region of North Carolina. Writing of the Appalachian region, Inscoe shows that enslaved labor was pervasive across several facets of the “mountain economy” (p. 227). Chapter three, “Mountain Masters,” mentions the presence of enslaved workers in hotels, in mercantile and manufacturing industries, in gold mining, in blacksmithing, and in public works and railroad construction.
Johnson, Rashauna. Slavery's Metropolis: Unfree Labor in New Orleans During the Age of Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. 260. Chapter 2, “Market Spaces,” examines the labor of commodity distribution, focusing on enslaved deliverymen, sailors, cart men, and female peddlers who connected urban and rural markets in Louisiana.
Kennedy, Cynthia M. Braided Relations, Entwined Lives: The Women of Charleston's Urban Slave Society. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. Pp. 328. Bibliog., index. This book analyzes gendered power relations by focusing on elite white women, slave women, elite women of color, and laboring white and free black women. Chapter 7 includes discussions of enslaved women who served as seamstresses, washerwomen, cooks, hucksters, apprentices, servants, and laborers.
Lander, Ernest M. “Charleston: Manufacturing Center of the Old South.” The Journal of Southern History 26, no. 3 (Aug. 1960): 330–351 (https://doi.org/10.2307/2204523).
Lewis, Ronald L. “Industrial Slavery: Linking the Periphery and the Core.” In African American Urban Experience: Perspectives from the Colonial Period to the Present, ed. Joe W. Trotter, Earl Lewis, and Tera W. Hunter, 35–57. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
Lockley, Timothy. “Slaveholders and slaves in Savannah's 1860 census.” Urban History, 41, no. 4 (2014): 647–663. Discusses and quantifies the different occupations held by enslaved people in Savannah, Georgia in 1860.
Majewski, John D. Modernizing a Slave Economy: The Economic Vision of the Confederate Nation. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009. Pp. xiii, 240. Illus., tables, graphs, maps, appendix, bibliog., index. In arguing against the view that the Confederacy unilaterally opposed modernization through industrial development, Majewski references the coexistence of slavery and industry in the South. Pp. 129–130 and pp. 155–157 include examples of industrial slavery along with southerners’ proposals for its expansion. Majewski also notes a simultaneous anxiety amongst southern enslavers, due to the perceived increase in mobility and autonomy of urban enslaved laborers (pp. 156–157).
Martin, Jonathan D. Divided Mastery: Slave Hiring in the American South. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004. Pp. 256.
Müller, Viola Franziska. Escape to the City: Fugitive Slaves in the Antebellum Urban South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2022. Pp. 262. 4 halftones, 7 tables, 1 graph. Chapters 5, “Finding Work, Remaining Poor,” and 6, “Urban Politics and Black Labor,” describe how escaped enslaved people found work as artisans and in industries with high demand for laborers such as mills, ironworks, and tobacco manufactories.
Newton, James E., and Ronald L. Lewis, eds.. The Other Slaves: Mechanics, Artisans, and Craftsmen. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1978. Pp. xv, 245. Bibliog. A comprehensive anthology delineating the existence of skilled, enslaved laborers across a wide array of antebellum industrial sectors. Its eighteen chapters constitute an organized guide to antebellum industrial slavery and Black artisanship.
Paterson, David E. “Slavery, Slaves, and Cash in a Georgia Village, 1825–1865.” The Journal of Southern History, 75, no. 4 (Nov. 2009): 879–930. Examines how bondspeople's work in skilled trades and industrial labor in Thomaston, Georgia, provided them with spending cash to purchase consumer goods.
Pursell, Carroll W., ed.. A Hammer in Their Hands: A Documentary History of Technology and the African-American Experience. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005. Pp. 416. Bibliog., index.
Oast, Jennifer. Institutional Slavery: Slaveholding Churches, Schools, Colleges, and Businesses in Virginia, 1680–1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xii, 264. Chapter 6, “'To make a trifle for themselves': industries as institutional slaveholders,” looks at enslaved labor in mines, ironworks, and tobacco manufactories, and the use of enslaved labor by the colonial and state government in Virginia.
Rockman, Seth. Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Pp. 265. Bibliog., “Essay on Sources,” index.
Schermerhorn, Calvin. Money over Mastery, Family over Freedom: Slavery in the Antebellum Upper South. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011. Pp. 295. Bibliog., index.
Schermerhorn, Calvin. Unrequited Toil: A History of United States Slavery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. ix, 258. Bibliog., index.
Schweninger, Loren. “Black-Owned Businesses in the South, 1790–1880.” Business History Review 63, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 22–60.
Shackel, Paul A. and David L. Larsen. “Labor, Racism, and the Built Environment in Early Industrial Harpers Ferry.” In Lines That Divide: Historical Archaeologies of Race, Class, and Gender, ed. James A. Delle, Stephen A. Mrozowski, and Robert Paynter, pp. 22–39. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2000. Pp. xxxi, 328. Illus., maps, bibliog., index.
Starobin, Robert S. Industrial Slavery in the Old South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970. Pp. xiii, 320. Illus. Considered by many scholars to be a foundational text on the subject. Many other works in this bibliography have cited this book. It covers a wide swath of involved industries, including textile manufacturing (cotton and wool), tobacco and hemp processing, sugar refining, rice milling, grist milling, cotton ginning, cotton pressing, cotton seed oil extraction, mining (gold, coal, and lead), salt, lumber, turpentine extraction and distillation, fishing, transportation (railroads, ferries, turnpikes, cargo hauling, and steamboats), internal improvement enterprises, public works, and secondary manufacturing industries (papermaking, tanning, etc.). Starobin includes information on the lives, labor, housing, and resistance efforts of those who were enslaved in industrial sectors. He also provides estimated counts for the enslaved labor populations of many of the industries covered, using evidence and numbers from specific companies, cities, states, and regions variably to prove its pervasive nature. For a critical assessment, see Alex Lichtenstein, “Industrial Slavery and the Tragedy of Robert Starobin,” Reviews in American History, Vol. 19, No. 4 (1991): 604–617.
Starobin, Robert S. “The Economics of Industrial Slavery in the Old South.” Business History Review 44, no. 2 (Summer 1970): 131–74 (https://doi.org/10.2307/3112351). This article, published in the Business History Review in the summer of 1970, is a slightly expanded version of the fifth chapter of Industrial Slavery in the Old South.
Takagi, Midori. Rearing Wolves to Our Own Destruction: Slavery in Richmond Virginia, 1782–1865. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000. Pp. x, 187. Illus., map, bibliog., index.
Trotter, Joe William, Jr. Workers on Arrival: Black Labor in the Making of America. Oakland: University of California Press, 2019. Pp. xxiv, 296. A sweeping history of Black labor's diversity and centrality to American economic development, Part 1, “Preindustrial Beginnings,” surveys the different forms of enslaved labor occupations in urban and rural areas from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.
Wade, Richard C. Slavery in the Cities; The South, 1820–1860. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964. Pp. x, 340. Bibliog.
Walker, Juliet E. K. The History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneurship. Volume 1, to 1865. 2nd ed. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009. Pp. 405. Bibliog., index. This book, originally published in 1998, is the first of a set of two volumes on the history of Black business in America, the second pertaining to the period after the Civil War. Walker compiled an extensive and crucial history, oriented by an opening chapter on precolonial West and West Central African economic infrastructures. In the chapters that follow, Walker details the enterprises of free and enslaved Black men and women business owners, managers, entrepreneurs, and intrapreneurs in the antebellum period. This book examines “slave entrepreneurs” who served as shopkeepers and merchants, craftspeople, as well as those who established enterprises in food services, transportation, and hair care enterprises. Walker defines “slave entrepreneurs” as men and women, who “hired their own time from their owners and established business enterprises as sole proprietors” (p. 52). Walker defines intrapreneurs as “bondsmen granted decision-making authority in managing the businesses of their owner in both agricultural and non-agricultural sectors” (p. 53). This includes those who performed account and other managerial work on plantations. Particularly relevant to the subject of this bibliography is chapter three, “Business Activities of African American Slaves, 1790–1865;” chapter four, “They Are Capitalists: Antebellum Free Black Business Activities;” and chapter five, “Antebellum Free Black Women Enterprises.” Researchers interested in enslaved and free entrepreneurship should also see Walker's essay “Racism, Slavery, and Free Enterprise: Black Entrepreneurship in the United States before the Civil War,” Business History Review (Autumn 1986): 343–382.
Zaborney, John J. Slaves for Hire: Renting Enslaved Laborers in Antebellum Virginia. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2012. Pp. xi, 218. Bibliog., index.
Agricultural Processing
The southern agricultural processing industry expanded during the nineteenth century. It has been estimated that around 30,000 enslaved laborers in total were employed at sugar refining, rice milling, and grist milling facilities.Footnote 10 Eastern and western tobacco manufacturers were also known to hire enslaved laborers to work in their factories—an estimated 15,000 in the year 1860.Footnote 11 Enslaved laborers, largely barred from patenting inventions under their own names, also made many unacknowledged contributions to the development and implementation of new agricultural technologies. The following works examine these aspects of the southern agricultural processing industries.
Follett, Richard J. The Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Louisiana's Cane World, 1820–1860. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005. Pp. viii, 290. Maps, bibliog., index.
Follett, Richard J., Sven Beckert, Peter A. Coclanis, and Barbara Hahn. Plantation Kingdom: The American South and Its Global Commodities. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016. Pp. 165. Bibliog., index.
Hopkins, James F. A History of the Hemp Industry in Kentucky. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1951. Reprint, Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2014. muse.jhu.edu/book/37023. Pp. 269. Bibliog., index.
Meacham, Sarah H. Every Home a Distillery: Alcohol, Gender, and Technology in the Colonial Chesapeake. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009, pp. 48–50. Meachum lists the primary sources mentioning the reliance on enslaved labor in liquor production on p. 154, note 22.
Moody, Vernie Alton. “Slavery on Louisiana Sugar Plantations.” Cabildo, New Orleans: S.N., 1924. Reprint, Louisiana Historical Quarterly (Apr. 1924). Pp. 112. Bibliog.
Robert, Joseph C. The Tobacco Kingdom; Plantation, Market, and Factory in Virginia and North Carolina, 1800–1860. Durham: Duke University Press, 1938. Pp. xiii, 286. 3 port., maps, diagrs., bibliog. Provides an overview of the antebellum tobacco industry in Virginia and North Carolina. Covers the cultivation, marketing, and manufacturing of tobacco. Contains statistics on the enslaved labor population in Virginia-North Carolina tobacco factories in 1840, 1850, and 1860 (p. 197). Describes the practice of hiring enslaved workers to work in tobacco factories in chapter 10.
Schnittman, Suzanne Gehring. “Slavery in Virginia's Urban Tobacco Industry – 1840–1860 (South, Labor, Richmond).” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Rochester, 1987. Pp. 441.
Siegel, Frederick F. The Roots of Southern Distinctiveness: Tobacco and Society in Danville, Virginia, 1780–1865. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987. Pp. xi, 205. Maps, bibliog., index.
Sitterson, J. Carlyle. Sugar Country; the Cane Sugar Industry in the South, 1753–1950. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1953. Pp. ix, 414. Illus., maps, bibliog., “Critical Essay on Authorities,” index. In part one, “The Slavery Regime, 1753–1865,” Sitterson provides a detailed background on the antebellum southern sugar industry. Chapter seven, “The Manufacture of Sugar,” is particularly insightful regarding the arduous work performed by enslaved laborers at sugar mills. The process of sugar making, alongside the major technological innovations in the field, is explained. Although this source provides readers with a thorough introduction to the southern sugar industry, Sitterson's views on the mental and emotional states of enslaved laborers may not represent contemporary opinion.
Thomas, Rylan Nathaniel. “Industrial Slavery at Arcadia Mill: An Historical and Archaeological Investigation.” M.A. Thesis, The University of West Florida, 2014. Pp. 175.
Artisanship
In Industrial Slavery in the Old South, Starobin noted the “extensive” use of enslaved labor among secondary manufacturing industries. Enslaved artisans, brickmakers, cobblers, bakers, tanners, papermakers, blacksmiths, cabinet makers, wheelwrights, carpenters, builders, inventors, and entrepreneurs were critical to the southern economy.Footnote 12 Many of these professions are included elsewhere in this bibliography, in tangent to the larger industrial sectors, yet the following sources pertain to them exclusively.
Barnes, L. Diane. Artisan Workers in the Upper South: Petersburg, Virginia, 1820–1865. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2009. Pp. 268. Bibliog., index.
Bishir, Catherine W. Crafting Lives: African American Artisans in New Bern, North Carolina, 1770–1900. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2013. Pp. 392. 29 halftones, 7 maps, appendix, notes, bibliog., index. Also see Catherine W. Bishir, “Urban Slavery at Work: The Bellamy Mansion Compound, Wilmington, North Carolina,” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, 17, no. 2 (Fall 2010): 13–32.
Carll-White, Mary Allison. “The Role of the Black Artisan in the Building Trades and the Decorative Arts in South Carolina's Charleston District, 1760–1800.” Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Tennessee, 1982. Pp. 319.
Green, Venus. “A Preliminary Investigation of Black Construction Artisans in Savannah from 1820 to 1860.” M.A. Thesis, Columbia University, 1982. Pp. 112.
Kenline-Nyman, Brooke. “Manufacturing Social Class: Ceramic Entrepreneurs and Industrial Slavery in the Old Edgefield District.” Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage 6 no. 2 (2017): 155–169 (https://doi.org/10.1080/21619441.2017.1345108).
National Museum of African American History and Culture, “Henry Boyd's Manufacturing Company,” n.d. (https://www.searchablemuseum.com/henry-boyds-manufacturing-company) and Ann Senefeld, “Henry Boyd - Former Slave and Cincinnati Entrepreneur,” February 6, 2014 (http://www.diggingcincinnati.com/2014/02/henry-boyd-former-slave-and-cincinnati.html). Though scholarly journal articles and the book Created Equal, by James Brodie, mention Boyd, these online entries make significant mention of Boyd's craft and business acumen. Born enslaved; inventor, carpenter, and master mechanic Henry Boyd purchased his freedom in 1826 and built a successful furniture factory in Cincinnati, Ohio. He invented and manufactured a corded bed, the Boyd Bedstead. However, in 1833 the U.S. Patent Office issued George Porter, a white cabinet maker, a patent for the technology used in Boyd's beds. Boyd's profits from his carpentry work allowed him to buy his own and his family's freedom.
Pritchett, Jonathan and Jessica Hayes. “The occupations of slaves sold in New Orleans: Missing values, cheap talk, or informative advertising?” Cliometrica Vol. 10, No. 2 (2016): 181–195.
Wilson, James David. “Pierre Caliste Landry and African American Leadership in Louisiana, 1841–1884,” M.A. Thesis, University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1997. Landry, who later became a politician and the U.S.'s first Black mayor, owned a broom manufactory as an enslaved man.
Chemical Manufacturing
There is a small quantity of literature on the utilization of enslaved labor by chemical manufacturers. T. Stephen Whitman has provided enlightening research on the history of the Maryland Chemical Works, a plant that employed industrial slavery during the antebellum period, as well as on the institution of slavery in Baltimore in general. In Free Frank: A Black Pioneer on the Antebellum Frontier, Juliet E. K. Walker contextualizes the story of Frank McWorter, who founded and ran a saltpeter manufactory while enslaved.
Walker, Juliet E. K. Free Frank: A Black Pioneer on the Antebellum Frontier. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1993. Pp. 238. Illus., tables, bibliog., index. During the War of 1812, the enslaved Frank McWorter set up his own saltpeter works. After self-purchase in 1819, he expanded his activities, including purchasing land and dealing in livestock.
Whitman, T. Stephen. “Industrial Slavery at the Margin: The Maryland Chemical Works.” The Journal of Southern History 59, no. 1 (Feb. 1993): 31–62 (https://doi.org/10.2307/2210347).
Whitman, T. Stephen. The Price of Freedom: Slavery and Manumission in Baltimore and Early National Maryland. New York: Routledge, 2000. Pp. 238. Illus., maps, bibliog., index.
Government Works
Although the subject has not received extensive scholarly attention, the use of enslaved labor by government entities was a widespread practice in the antebellum South. Sometimes known as “public hands,” these enslaved workers were purchased or hired by municipalities, states, and the federal government to provide labor for public works programs, internal improvements, and developments in transportation. In addition to the works of Aaron Hall, listed below, the topic of “public” industrial slavery is also explored in Robert Starobin's Industrial Slavery in the Old South (pp. 30–34), and Carter Goodrich's Government Promotion of American Canals and Railroads, 1800–1890 (pp. 103, 116).
Bell, Felica A. “‘The negroes alone work’: Enslaved Craftsmen, the Building Trades, and the Construction of the United States Capitol, 1790–1800.” Ph.D. dissertation, Howard University, 2009. Pp. 278.
Hall, Aaron R. “Public Slaves and State Engineers: Modern Statecraft on Louisiana's Waterways, 1833–1861.” Journal of Southern History 85, no. 3 (Aug. 2019): 531–576 (doi:10.1353/soh.2019.0162).
Hall, Aaron R. “Slaves of the State: Infrastructure and Governance through Slavery in the Antebellum South.” The Journal of American History 106 no. 1 (June 2019): 19–46 (https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaz166).
Quintana, Ryan A. Making a Slave State: Political Development in Early South Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018. Pp. 254. Examines how enslaved people engaged in public works in South Carolina during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, including the building of canals, roads, and military bases, and how this infrastructure reinforced the slave system.
Wexler, Charles. “Palmetto Navy: Ironclad Construction and the Naval Defense of Charleston During the Civil War.” Ph.D. dissertation, Auburn University, 2015. Pp. 241.
Ironmaking
The southern ironmaking sector has received a significant amount of scholarly attention regarding its utilization of enslaved labor. The following works examine the operations of ironworks across the region, together presenting a clear view of industrial slavery through the window of a quintessential manufacturing sector. According to estimates by Starobin, a total of 10,000 enslaved people labored at southern iron works during the antebellum period.Footnote 13
Adams, Sean Patrick. “The perils of personal capital in antebellum America: John Spotswood Wellford and Virginia's Catharine Furnace.” Business History 55, no. 9 (2013): 1339–1360.
Bezís-Selfa, John. Forging America: Ironworkers, Adventurers, and the Industrious Revolution. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004. Pp. xi, 279. Illus., bibliog., index.
Bradford, S. Sydney. “The Negro Ironworker in Ante Bellum Virginia.” The Journal of Southern History 25, no. 2 (May 1959): 194–206 (https://doi.org/10.2307/2954613).
Bruce, Kathleen. “Slave Labor in the Virginia Iron Industry,” William and Mary Quarterly 6, no. 4 (Oct. 1926): 289–302. Also see continuation in vol. 7, no. 1 (Jan. 1927): 21–31.
Bruce, Kathleen. Virginia Iron Manufacture in the Slave Era. New York, London: The Century Co., 1930. Pp. xiii, 482. Front. (port.) plates, fold. map, bibliog.
Christian, Marcus. Negro Ironworkers in Louisiana, 1718–1900. Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican, 1972. Pp. vii, 61. Illus., bibliog. From a note in "The Cut and The Color Line," by Owen James Hyman, Christian includes discussion of “free and enslaved carpenters, blacksmiths, and ironworkers, including their engineering contributions to sugar manufacturing and the state's petroleum industry” (p. 83).
Dew, Charles B. Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge. New York: W.W. Norton, 1994. Pp. xviii, 429. Illus., maps, bibliog., index. In this book, Dew focuses thematically on the utilization of slavery at Buffalo Forge, an antebellum ironmaking center in the Valley of Virginia. Part one, “The Master,” focuses on furnace and forge owner William Weaver; part two, “The Slaves,” on the enslaved ironworkers at his plants; and part three, “Buffalo Forge,” includes additional information on the labor of enslaved individuals at Weaver's residences and forges. This is a lengthy source, centered on industrial slavery in the antebellum iron sector. The book was selected as a Notable Book of the Year for 1994 by the New York Times Book Review.
Dew, Charles B. “David Ross and the Oxford Iron Works: A Study of Industrial Slavery in the Early Nineteenth-Century South,” William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 2 (Apr. 1974): 189–224.
Dew, Charles B. “Disciplining Slavery Ironworkers in the Antebellum South: Coercion, Conciliation, and Accommodation,” American Historical Review, vol. 79, no. 2 (Apr. 1974): 393–418.
Dew, Charles B. Ironmaker to the Confederacy: Joseph R. Anderson and the Tredegar Iron Works. 2nd ed. Richmond: Library of Virginia, 1999. Pp. xviii, 345. Illus., maps, bibliog., index. This book, first published in 1966, is an in-depth investigation into the operations of the Tredegar Iron Works of Richmond, Virginia, and its significant industrial development in the antebellum period. The Tredegar Iron Works, known for producing iron and munitions for the Confederacy during the Civil War, is also distinctive for its surviving archival presence. Also covered is the unsuccessful 1847 Tredegar iron strike, performed by white wage laborers in segregationist protest of enslaved labor at the mills, making this source a useful reference for the varied utilization of industrial slavery in the iron industry.
Dew, Charles B. “Slavery and Technology in the Antebellum Southern Iron Industry: The Case of Buffalo Forge.” In Science and Medicine in the Old South, ed. Ronald L. Numbers and Todd L. Savitt, pp. 107–126. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989. In this essay, Dew expands upon the relationship between enslaved labor and stagnant technological progress within the southern iron industry. Referencing the example of William Weaver of Buffalo Forge, Virginia, Dew emphasizes the importance of stability to southern ironmasters, along with their concerns over the implementation of newer methods of production, such as rolling mills and hot blast pig iron furnaces.
Gavin, Michael Thomas. “From Bands of Iron to Promise Land: The African-American Contribution to Middle Tennessee's Antebellum Iron Industry.” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 64, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 24–42 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/42628560).
Lewis, Ronald L. Coal, Iron, and Slaves: Industrial Slavery in Maryland and Virginia, 1715–1865. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1979. Pp. 283. Illus., bibliog., index.
Lewis, W. David. Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District: An Industrial Epic. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1994. Pp. 672. Bibliog., index.
Murphy, Sharon Ann. “Enslaved Financing of Southern Industry: The Nesbitt Manufacturing Company of South Carolina, 1836–1850.” Enterprise & Society 23, no. 3 (Sep. 2022): 746–789 (https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2020.78 ). Offers a unique view into the multifaceted utilization of enslaved labor by the Nesbitt Manufacturing Company, an ironworks in South Carolina. In addition to investigating the use of enslaved workers at the factory itself, Murphy demonstrates how they were used as collateral and even currency in its financial operations. In doing so, Murphy draws a complex web of connections between ironworking, industrial slavery, and financial modernity.
Schechter, Patricia A. “Free and Slave Labor in the Old South: The Tredegar Ironworkers' Strike of 1847.” Labor History 35 no. 2 (March 1994): 165–186 (https://doi.org/10.1080/00236569400890151).
Scott, Norman H. Shenandoah Iron: A History of Mining, Smelting, and Transporting Iron in the Virginia Counties of Clarke, Frederick, Page, Rockingham, Shenandoah and Warren. Self-published, CreateSpace, 2017. Pp. 350. Photos, maps, drawings, bibliog.
Smith, James Larry. “Historical Geography of the Southern Charcoal Iron Industry, 1800–1860.” Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Tennessee, 1982. Pp. 364.
Mining & Extractive Industries
Many of the mining and extractive industries of the antebellum South have been studied for their involvement with slavery. This bibliography includes works on lumbering, turpentine extraction, salt production, and coal, gold, and lead mining.
Coal and iron mines were widespread across the South, with concentrations throughout Appalachia, in central Alabama and Missouri, in parts of Maryland and Tennessee, and near Richmond, Virginia. Starobin noted a total of 1,847 enslaved miners in Virginia by 1861, and 746 in Kentucky.Footnote 14 Gold mining was another sector that employed industrial slavery. Despite a period of Californian dominance in the 1850s, North Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia collectively produced tens of millions of dollars for federal mints.Footnote 15
Southern forests also sustained several industrial sectors, including logging, lumbering, and turpentine extraction and distillation. Turpentine manufactories purportedly relied solely on enslaved labor, and the greater naval stores industry in the South employed 15,000 enslaved workers by 1860.Footnote 16
Saltworks were also crucial to the southern economy, with boileries located on the coasts, in eastern Kentucky, Arkansas, and the Kanawha River Valley in West Virginia. An estimated 3,140 enslaved laborers were employed in the production of salt in 1850.Footnote 17
Adams, Sean Patrick. Old Dominion, Industrial Commonwealth: Coal, Politics, and Economy in Antebellum America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Pp. 324.
Billings, Dwight B., and Kathleen M. Blee. The Road to Poverty: The Making of Wealth and Hardship in Appalachia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xiv, 434. Illus., maps, ports., bibliog., index. Part two, chapter three, “Industry, Commerce, and Slaveholding,” examines the underlying role of slavery in the salt industry of Clay County, Kentucky. It is a poignant example of Appalachian industrial slavery and may aid in orienting readers to the widespread geographical scope of this institution.
de Boer, Tycho. “The Corporate Forest: Capitalism and Environmental Change in Southeastern North Carolina's Longleaf Pine Belt, 1790–1940.” Ph.D. dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 2002. Pp. 245.
Green, Fletcher Melvin. “Gold Mining: A Forgotten Industry of Ante-bellum North Carolina.” The North Carolina Historical Review 14, no. 1 (Jan. 1937): 1–19 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/23516115).
Hickman, Nollie W. Mississippi Harvest: Lumbering in the Longleaf Pine Belt, 1840–1915. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009. Pp. 306. Illus., bibliog.
Hyman, Owen James. “The Cut and The Color Line: An Environmental History of Jim Crow in the Deep South's Forests.” Ph.D. dissertation, Mississippi State University, 2018. Pp. 303. Parts of this dissertation, which won the 2018 C. Vann Woodward Prize for the best dissertation in Southern history from the Southern Historical Association, mention those who acquired the skills during enslavement to engage in sailing and marine carpentry in the Gulf of Mexico and in the timber industry, including Etienne Maxson, an enslaved woodsman and boatman, who worked for and provided materials for lumber mills and ship builders. In freedom, Maxson worked on municipal building projects and continued working for area lumber mills.
Moore, John Hebron. Andrew Brown and Cypress Lumbering in the Old Southwest. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967. Pp. xv, 180. Illus., ports., “Essay on Sources,” index.
Outland, Robert B. Tapping the Pine: The Naval Stores Industry in the American South. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004. Pp. xii, 352. Illus.
Rice, Otis K. “Coal Mining in the Kanawha Valley to 1861: A View of Industrialization in the Old South.” The Journal of Southern History 31, no. 4 (Nov. 1965): 393–416. Mentions the use of enslaved labor by several mines in the Kanawha Valley area on page 415.
Stealey, John E. The Antebellum Kanawha Salt Business and Western Markets. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993. Pp. ix, 261. Illus.
Stinson, Jennifer Kirsten. “Bondage and Resistance in the Land of Lead: Antebellum Upper Mississippi River Valley Mineral Country Landscapes.” Slavery & Abolition 38, no. 1 (2017): 6–22 (https://doi.org/10.1080/0144039X.2017.1286075).
Vollmers, Gloria. “Industrial Slavery in the United States: The North Carolina Turpentine Industry 1849–61.” Accounting, Business & Financial History 13 no. 3 (Nov. 2003): 369–392 (https://doi.org/10.1080/09585200310001606626).
Zallen, Jeremy. American Lucifers: The Dark History of Artificial Light, 1750–1865. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. Pp. 368. 15 halftones, 1 graph, 5 maps, notes, bibliog., index. Describes the brutality and exacting costs underlying the interconnected industries that made artificial light possible—and of those industries that demanded it—in the antebellum United States. It discusses industrial slavery in the sugar (chapter 1), turpentine (chapter 2), coal mining and gasworks (chapter 3), pig farming and lard lighting (chapter 4), phosphorous (chapter 5), and saltworks and oil extraction (chapter 6) industries. In the epilogue, Zallen writes, “the first century of the industrialization of light was a story of a hidden relationship between industrial slavery, industrial captivity, the exploitation of children and outworking free women, and the democratization of artificial light” (p. 269).
Textiles
Although many associate textile manufacturing with the mills of New England and Great Britain, the South also developed a number of textile mills during the nineteenth century. The use of enslaved labor by these cotton and woolen mills was certainly prevalent, though perhaps more volatile than that of other industrial sectors. Heavily influenced by the changing price of cotton and other leading staple crops, the southern textile industry declined at the end of the antebellum period. In addition, rising segregationist racial consciousness and fears of insurrection motivated many factories to switch from enslaved labor to white wage labor.Footnote 18 Still, Starobin estimated that over 5,000 enslaved people remained at southern cotton and woolen mills in 1860.Footnote 19
Griffin, Richard W. “The Origins of the Industrial Revolution in Georgia: Cotton Textiles, 1810–1865.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 42, no. 4 (Dec. 1958): 355–375 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/40578026).
Lander, E. M. “Slave Labor in South Carolina Cotton Mills.” The Journal of Negro History 38, no. 2 (Apr. 1953): 161–73 (https://doi.org/10.2307/2715537).
Miller, Randall M. “The Fabric of Control: Slavery in Antebellum Southern Textile Mills.” Business History Review 55, no. 4 (Winter, 1981): 471. Miller includes a detailed historiography on industrial slavery and the antebellum textile industry. His footnotes on pp. 472–473 are particularly useful as a subject overview. Although his extensive research on the topic of slavery in southern textile manufacturing warrants his inclusion in this bibliography, his views on the relationship between the enslaver and the enslaved may not represent contemporary opinion.
Preyer, Norris W. “The Historian, The Slave, and The Ante-Bellum Textile Industry.” The Journal of Negro History 46, no. 2 (Apr. 1961): 67–82 (https://doi.org/10.2307/2716713). In this article, Preyer outlines the use of enslaved labor in antebellum southern textile mills and contextualizes the industry-wide shift to white wage workers in the 1830s and 40s. Preyer establishes that Black enslaved workers were known to be skilled factory operators and, in some instances, managers. This article asserts that the switch to white wage labor was likely encouraged by a rising fear of insurrection, a segregationist racial consciousness, and a redirected focus on cotton planting following an industry squeeze from northern factory competition in the 1850s.
Standard, Diffee W., and Richard W. Griffin. “The Cotton Textile Industry in Antebellum North Carolina: Part I: Origin and Growth to 1830.” The North Carolina Historical Review 34, no. 1 (Jan. 1957): 15–35 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/23517242).
Stokes, Allen Heath, Jr. “Black and White Labor and the Development of the Southern Textile Industry, 1800–1920.” PhD diss., University of South Carolina, 1977. Pp. 286.
Transportation
Slavery was a deeply incorporated element of many antebellum transportation industries, including the development and operation of railroads, steamboats, and canals. One of the clearest examples of industrial slavery within the transportation sector was the development of southern railroads, many of which were built exclusively with enslaved labor.Footnote 20
Buchanan, Thomas C. Black Life on the Mississippi: Slaves, Free Blacks, and the Western Steamboat World. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Pp. xv, 256. Illus., maps. Buchanan outlines the lives of enslaved steamboat laborers and free Black workers on the Mississippi River. As the book notes, enslaved laborers served in a litany of roles within the steamboat industry, from deck and cabin crews to waiters, firemen, and chambermaids. This is a very detailed source for the steamboat industry and would be a useful guide to any researcher investigating the use of enslaved labor on steamboats.
Goodrich, Carter. Government Promotion of American Canals and Railroads, 1800–1890. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1974. Pp. x, 382. Illus., bibliog.
Kornweibel, Theodore. “‘Not at All Proper for Women’: Black Female Railroaders,” Railroad History No. 201 (Fall-Winter 2009): 6–29. Enslaved women are discussed on pp. 6–9.
Kornweibel, Theodore. “Railroads and Slavery.” Railroad History, no. 189 (Fall-Winter 2003): 34–59 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/43504849).
Kornweibel, Theodore. Railroads in the African American Experience: A Photographic Journey. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2010, “Prologue” (pp. 1–9) and “‘Negroes Will Do More Work’: Slavery and the Dawn of Southern Railroading” (pp. 10–37). This book also includes images of primary sources, such as an 1853 Richmond & Petersburg Railroad slave-hiring bond.
Marrs, Aaron W. Railroads in the Old South: Pursuing Progress in a Slave Society. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Pp. xiv, 268. Illus. Marrs offers an extensive analysis of southern railroad development during the antebellum period, and in doing so, emphasizes its reliance on industrial slavery. By examining southern technological and industrial progress through the nexus of the southern railroad, an industry that relied on enslaved labor, Marrs poignantly illustrates the South's complex marriage between traditionalism and modernity. Chapter three, “Sweat,” would be a particularly useful section for those hoping to gain a background on the utilization of enslaved labor in the development and operation of southern railroads. Also see Aaron W. Marrs, “The Iron Horse Turns South: A History of Antebellum Southern Railroads,” Enterprise & Society, 8, no. 4 (Dec. 2007): 784–789.
Noe, Kenneth W. Southwest Virginia's Railroad: Modernization and the Sectional Crisis. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994. Pp. ix, 221. Illus., maps, bibliog., index.
Petersen, Keri T. “The North Carolina Railroad, Industrial Slavery, and the Economic Development of North Carolina”. Ph.D. dissertation, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2017. Pp. 247.
Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell. A History of Transportation in the Eastern Cotton Belt to 1860. New York: Columbia University Press, 1908. Pp. xvii, 405. Illus., maps (1 fold.), tables, bibliog.
Thomas, William G. The Iron Way: Railroads, the Civil War, and the Making of Modern America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. Pp. 281. Illus., maps, bibliog., index.
Trelease, Allen W. The North Carolina Railroad, 1849–1871, and the Modernization of North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. Pp. xvi, 486. Illus., maps, bibliog., index.
Way, Peter. Common Labour: Workers and the Digging of North American Canals, 1780–1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Pp. xvii, 304. Map.
