In this Virginia History Blog, we explore the developments leading antebellum Virginia to hold the largest free black population, with artisans free and slave, with slave hires for industrial work and construction on canals and railroads. Virginia 1820-1860 was a slave state with an emerging market economy, industrialization and substantial out-migration of whites and blacks. Besides the planation slaves in cash crop tobacco, more were engaged in grain production such as wheat.
“Freedom has a Face” studies the “culture of personalism” that free blacks carved out for themselves in Albemarle County. “Race and Liberty” looks at the change in anti-slavery manumissions to the later antebellum pro-slavery climate. “Money over Mastery” shows how slave hires used cash payments to free themselves and family members. “Almost Free” traces the family history of one free slave family in Fauquier County and their manumissions. “Slaves for Hire” establishes that the practice was widespread and ultimately resulted in strengthening slave-holding in Virginia.
For more book reviews at TheVirginiaHistorian.com in this historical era addressing other topics, see the webpage for Antebellum, Civil War and Reconstruction Era (1820-1883). General surveys of Virginia History can be found at Virginia History Surveys. Other Virginia history divided by topics and time periods can be found at the webpage Books and Reviews.
Freedom has a Face
Kirt von Daacke wrote Freedom Has a Face: Race, Identity, and Community in Jefferson’s Virginia in 2012. It is now available at the University of Virginia Press, on Kindle and online new and used.
In Virginia’s Piedmont Albemarle County, free blacks were not hemmed in by restrictive racial barriers. Rather, color lines blurred in their antebellum world where white and black, free and slave habitually mingled and personally knew each other. Albemarle’s white residents did not insist on strict compliance with either the 1793 registration law for free blacks, or with the 1806 free black removal law. Albemarle courts protected free blacks. Whites signed individual petitions for free blacks to remain in Virginia.
The county had a “culture of personalism” where known behavior and reputation transcended skin color. Virginia’s restrictive laws and its fearful slave rebellions were about blacks unknown to whites in Albemarle, and therefore the others were threatening, not the known free black neighbors.
To purchase “Freedom has a Face” at Amazon, click here.
Race and Liberty
Eva Sheppard Wolf wrote Race and Liberty in the New Nation: Emancipation in Virginia from the Revolution to Nat Turner’s Rebellion in 2006. It is now available from the LSU Press and online new and used.
White Virginians actively debated emancipation following the Revolutionary War through Nat Turner’s Rebellion in 1830. Wolf concludes that the anti-slavery faction was never ascendant. Whether based on enlightenment views of human equality or religious views of spiritual equality in the eyes of God, antislavery views played a prominent role in manumissions chiefly in the period from 1782 through the mid-1790s. After that time, few emancipators were openly hostile to slavery as an institution, rather they gave individuals freedom selectively as a pro-slavery means of racial control.
In the period from 1806 to 1832 there were many fewer manumissions. While the slave population in plantation districts outstripped the white, there also arose a substantial black population of freemen who were neither white nor slave. A more aggressive proslavery ideology grew up in the east when Virginia’s western men began to demand white male suffrage and equitable representation based on population. For slave-owning Virginians, defense of slavery became a political priority.
To purchase “Race and Liberty” at Amazon, click here.
Money over Mastery
Calvin Schermerhorn wrote Money over Mastery, Family over Freedom: Slavery in the Antebellum Upper South in 2011. It is now available on Kindle and new online in paperback.
Schermerhorn studies entrepreneurial slaves in the antebellum Chesapeake and coastal North Carolina during a time of growing interstate slave trade that divided enslaved families. Watermen with maritime networks, urban slaves, industrial slaves processing tobacco and those hired out to railroads all used cash payments to free family from bondage. Slaveholders sought a market economy beyond the plantation by allowing wages, hiring slaves out to industries, or selling field hands South.
These entrepreneurial slaves of the Upper South sought to preserve their families rather than to seek individual freedom for themselves. They developed networks through their commercial contacts, in biracial church and in the market to make arrangements to keep their families in tact. Sometimes they were successful, at other times whites betrayed their agreements and auctions of forced migration sent family members to the cotton frontier.
To purchase “Money over Mastery” at Amazon, click here.
Almost Free
Eva Sheppard Wolf wrote Almost Free: A Story and Family and Race in Antebellum Virginia in 2012. It is now available from the University of Georgia Press, on Kindle and online new and used.
This story is of one African-descended family in central antebellum Virginia seeking to free themselves by manumission. The setting is Warrenton and Fauquier County Virginia where whites and people of color mixed, formed families and owned property.
Beginning with Samuel Johnson’s manumission in 1812, Patty and Samuel Johnson sought first to achieve freedom for themselves and their two children, and then petitioned the Virginia General Assembly to remain in their homeland.
While he was successful in gaining a General Assembly statute for himself, after freeing his wife and children, he was unable for a period of time to secure the same for his family. A well-known worker at the Norris Tavern in Warrenton, Johnson bought a house and land outside the town. His petition for daughter Lucy had 226 signatures including white women and two U.S. Congressmen.
To purchase “Almost Free” at Amazon, click here.
Slaves for Hire
John J. Zaborney wrote Slaves for Hire: Renting Enslaved Laborers in Antebellum Virginia in 2012. It is now available from the LSU Press, Kindle and online new and used.
Slave hiring presented opportunities for enterprising slaves, but it also created problems. Some earned significant sums through overtime, exceeding quotas or playing owners and hirers against one another. But in addition to long family separations, such being hired out could also bring whippings or sale away. The practice in antebellum Virginia was widespread, in urban factories, mining operations and on tenant farms.
Among whites, slave hiring increased racial solidarity by reducing class tensions. Tenant farmers could rent slaves as field hands or domestics. A plantation’s surplus slaves were more likely to be hired out at least once before being sold South in the domestic slave trade. Hired out slaves who caused trouble to either employers or owners could be sold as punishment.
To purchase “Slaves for Hire” at Amazon, click here.
Note: Insights for these reviews are include those taken from articles in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of American History.