Open post Antebellum - Slaves for Hire - cover

Free blacks, Artisans and Slave Hires

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....

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Open post Virginia's Free African American, illustration

Virginia’s Free African Americans, 1780-1865

Here are four histories of free Blacks in Virginia highlighting self reliant communities in a slave society. Of course, Virginia’s free African Americans have a history dating from 1619 with their importation as “servants” with subsequent freedom and voting rights in the 1600s. But these focus on the era of their substantial expansion and integration...

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