Coal, Iron, and Slaves: Industrial Slavery in Maryland and Virginia, 1715-1865

Abstract

Book Reviews 663 sectional differences stand out from a torrent of information derived from court and prison records, public documents, and private papers.Yet prison and plantation were similar institutions. Both confined large labor forces that the powerful perceived as threatening; both deprived those people of fundamental rights; and both reflected the productive systems of their states. Immigrants were the dangerous class in the Northeast and were most frequently confined for drunkenness and crimes against property. In the Palmetto State, slaves were the dangerous class and were most frequently prosecuted for larceny or theft. Crimes of violence (like assault), more common among whites, usually were resolved privately. But the Massachusetts State Prison was initially a manifestation of reform, a thrust toward the future. The plantation, with its slave labor base and private law, was an artifact of the past.Michael Stephen Hindus presents striking contrasts, especially in divergent concepts about the public apparatus of justice: published statutes and decisions, prosecutors, courts, and penitentiaries. Reformers in the Bay State continually reorganized, regularized, and strengthened these; tried to codify their statutes; lowered the number of capital crimes to one; and experimented with methods of rehabilitation. Reform was alien to South Carolina, where benefit of clergy still mitigated convictions and statutory revision and penitentiaries awaited Reconstruction. Victims (not public prosecutors) initiated criminal charges, and the court system was deliberately kept weak so that private methods of settling disputes could proceed unfettered. Although capital crimes decreased to twenty, the conviction rate for whites remained low. For blacks, of course, there was a separate system that bypassed grand jury indictments, prohibited testimony against whites, and provided plantation trials. Conviction rates were predictably high, and during the first half of the century at least 296 slaves were executed. In the same era, there were only 28 executions in Massachusetts among a population twice as large.The author illustrates his findings in thirty-three tables and charts, including an imaginative comparison between simple and effective conviction rates. His reliance upon lower court records--especially a cache from Spartanbulg and Anderson districts of South Carolina--has made him less sanguine about justice for blacks than others whose evidence derives from appellate courts. (Comparable federal court records might illuminate these differences.) Although his conclusion emphasizes similarities, his book leaves an enduring vision of Massachusetts leaders proudly displaying their professional police and model penitentiary while South Carolina gentlemen were following a code of honor that protected duelers and vigilantes.

The genetic legacy of African Americans from Catoctin Furnace

“…Historical records suggest that iron works enslavers often kept families together to benefit from a sustained knowledge transfer between generations. It was also believed that this practice minimized the likelihood of revolt or escape caused by family separation (49)(50)(51). Most of the genetic connections we identified were between first-degree relatives, usually mothers and children.…”