Manufacturing Social Class: Ceramic Entrepreneurs and Industrial Slavery in the Old Edgefield District

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on the relatively understudied context of industrial slavery in the United States and on slave-owning ceramic entrepreneurs in a rural region of the antebellum South. The institution of slavery was expanded into industrial contexts such as the Edgefield District potteries of South Carolina by a number of entrepreneurs, including Reverend John Landrum, in the early 19th century. The use of enslaved laborers in lieu of wage laborers provided such business operators with a form of social capital in addition to economic proceeds. This article analyzes the results of preliminary archaeological investigations of domestic locations at the Reverend John Landrum site in Aiken County along with related documentary evidence. Industrial slavery in the rural, and primarily agricultural, antebellum South was linked in multifaceted ways with slaveholder identity and a desire to attain wealth and acceptance within particular social networks.