Slaves For Hire

In Slaves for Hire, John J. Zaborney overturns long-standing beliefs about slave labor in the antebellum South. Previously, scholars viewed slave hiring as an aberration -- a modified form of slavery, involving primarily urban male slaves, that worked to the laborer's advantage and weakened slavery's institutional integrity. In the first in-depth examination of slave hiring in Virginia, Zaborney suggests that this endemic practice bolstered the institution of slavery in the decades leading up to the Civil War, all but assuring Virginia's secession from the Union to protect slavery. Moving beyond previous analyses, Zaborney examines slave hiring in rural and agricultural settings, along with the renting of women, children, and elderly slaves. His research reveals that, like non-hired-out slaves, these other workers' experiences varied in accordance with sex, location, occupation, economic climate, and crop prices, as well as owners' and renters' convictions and financial circumstances. Hired slaves in Virginia faced a full range of oppression from nearly full autonomy to harsh exploitation. Whites of all economic, occupational, gender, ethnic, and age groups, including slave owners and non-slave-owners, rented slaves regularly. Additionally, male owners and hirers often transported slaves to those who worked them, and acted as agents for white women who wished to hire out their slaves. Ultimately, widespread white mastery of hired slaves allowed owners with superfluous slaves to offer them for rent locally rather than selling them to the Lower South, establishing the practice as an integral feature of Virginia slavery.

Divided Mastery explores a curiously neglected aspect of the history of American slavery: the rental of slaves. Though few slaves escaped being rented out at some point in their lives, this is the first book to describe the practice, and its effects on both slaves and the peculiar institution. Martin reveals how the unique triangularity of slave hiring created slaves with two masters, thus transforming the customary polarity of master-slave relationships. Drawing upon slaveholders' letters, slave narratives, interviews with former slaves, legislative petitions, and court records, Divided Mastery ultimately reveals that slave hiring's significance was paradoxical. The practice bolstered the system of slavery by facilitating its spread into the western territories, by democratizing access to slave labor, and by promoting both production and speculation with slave capital. But at the same time, slaves used hiring to their advantage, finding in it crucial opportunities to shape their work and family lives, to bring owners and hirers into conflict with each other, and to destabilize the system of bondage. Martin illuminates the importance of the capitalist market as a tool for analyzing slavery and its extended relationships. Through its fresh and complex perspective, Divided Mastery demonstrates that slave hiring is critical to understanding the fundamental nature of American slavery, and its social, political, and economic place in the Old South.

A book that details aspects of slavery in Tennessee and its relationship with the economy, newspapers and the government. Based largely on newspaper advertisements and first-person accounts, this book is full of revelations that prove that slavery was a much bigger part of Tennessee's culture than people realize today.

The slave-hire system of Charleston, South Carolina, in the 1700s and the 1800s produced a curious object--the slave badge. The badges were intended to legislate the practice of hiring a slave from one master to another, and slaves were required by law to wear them. Slave badges have become quite collectible and have excited both scholarly and popular interest in recent years. This work documents how the slave-hire system in Charleston came about, how it worked, who was in charge of it, and who enforced the laws regarding slave badges. Numerous badge makers are identified, and photographs of badges, with commentary on what the data stamped on them mean, are included. The authors located income and expense statements for Charleston from 1783 to 1865, and deduced how many slaves were hired out in the city every year from 1800 on. The work also discusses forgeries of slave badges, now quite common. There is a section of 20 color plates.

The slave-hire system of Charleston, South Carolina, in the 1700s and the 1800s produced a curious object—the slave badge. The badges were intended to legislate the practice of hiring a slave from one master to another, and slaves were required by law to wear them. Slave badges have become quite collectible and have excited both scholarly and popular interest in recent years. This work documents how the slave-hire system in Charleston came about, how it worked, who was in charge of it, and who enforced the laws regarding slave badges. Numerous badge makers are identified, and photographs of badges, with commentary on what the data stamped on them mean, are included. The authors located income and expense statements for Charleston from 1783 to 1865, and deduced how many slaves were hired out in the city every year from 1800 on. The work also discusses forgeries of slave badges, now quite common. There is a section of 20 color plates.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the mistreatment of black Americans. In this 'precise and eloquent work' - as described in its Pulitzer Prize citation - Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history - an 'Age of Neoslavery' that thrived in the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II. Using a vast record of original documents and personal narratives, Blackmon unearths the lost stories of slaves and their descendants who journeyed into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation and then back into the shadow of involuntary servitude thereafter. By turns moving, sobering and shocking, this unprecedented account reveals these stories, the companies that profited the most from neoslavery, and the insidious legacy of racism that reverberates today.

Wage-Earning Slaves is the first systematic study of coartación, a process by which slaves worked toward purchasing their freedom in installments, long recognized as a distinctive feature of certain areas under Spanish colonial rule in the nineteenth century. Focusing on Cuba, this book reveals that instead of providing a “path to manumission,” the process was often rife with obstacles that blocked slaves from achieving liberty. Claudia Varella and Manuel Barcia trace the evolution of coartación in the context of urban and rural settings, documenting the lived experiences of slaves through primary sources from many different archives. They show that slave owners grew increasingly intolerant and abusive of the process, and that the laws of coartación were not often followed in practice. The process did not become formalized as a contract between slaves and their masters until 1875, after abolition had already come. Varella and Barcia discuss how coartados did not see an improvement in their situation at this time, but essentially became wage-earning slaves as they continued serving their former owners. The exhaustive research in this volume provides valuable insight into how slaves and their masters negotiated with each other in the ever-changing economic world of nineteenth-century Cuba, where freedom was not always absolute and where abuses and corruption most often prevailed.