Industrial Slavery: Linking the Periphery and the Core

Abstract

Industrial slavery seems destined to forever occupy a place at the periphery of the discourse on American slavery. The Old South was, after all, overwhelmingly a rural, plantation economy, and industry is generally associated with urban places. The fact that only about 5 percent of the region’s slave population labored in industrial pursuits at any given time is sufficient to understand why industrial slavery has generated relatively little scholarship. Non-specialists are generally unaware that industrial slavery existed at all. Similarly, few scholars or laymen are aware that slavery was a significant institution in the southern Appalachians. Both industrial and Appalachian slavery existed at the periphery of the South’s staple agricultural economy, but we can learn much about the South and slavery from studying the role played by this one-half million slaves in the region’s economy.