Dew (American Studies/Williams) uses the meticulously kept records
of Virginia slaveholders to create an engrossing, often surprising
record of everyday life on an estate in the antebellum South.
Initially, Dew gives a matter-of-fact account of the prosperous
business of entrepreneur William Weaver and Daniel Brady, Weaver's
niece's husband, at Buffalo Forge and Etna Furnace, Weaver's
western Virginia ironworks. The industrious and litigious Weaver
was a shrewd businessman whose humanity to his slaves was practical
rather than altruistic. Dew tells how Weaver built his slave labor
force, trained them in the intricacies of forge work, and motivated
them to work hard through incentives - notably, his "overwork"
system in which he paid the slaves wages for tons of iron
manufactured in excess of production quotas. Then Dew goes on to
tell the stories of the slaves themselves - including Sam Williams,
a master refiner at Buffalo Forge and Baptist community leader who
earned overwork only when he chose but who also maintained a high
standard of living for his family; Garland Thompson, "an imposing
figure of a man, courageous and unflinching when confronted by
white authroity and capable of prodigious feats of strength and
workmanship." Finally, Dew tells how the Buffalo Forge community
broke up during the crisis of the Civil War, with the growing
demand for iron finally exhausting the supply. Diphtheria, typhoid,
and tuberculosis epidemics claimed slaves' lives, and Weaver's
death in 1863 ended Buffalo Forge's productive life. After 1868,
the forge finally closed and sharecropping replaced industiral work
among the black community at Buffalo Forge. A novel contribution to
the massive corpus of literature on American slavery - one that
shows slaves as skilled artisans leading lives of considerable
dignity and achievement, who despite their accomplishments under
the slave regime never stopped yearning for freedom. (Kirkus
Reviews)
At Buffalo Forge, an extensive ironmaking and farming enterprise in
Virginia before the Civil War, a unique treasury of materials
yields an "engrossing, often surprising record of everyday life on
an estate in the antebellum South" (Kirkus Reviews).
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