The underside of slavery: The internal economy, self‐hire, and quasi‐freedom in Virginia, 1780–1865

Abstract

From the beginning of the twentieth century, scholars have shown an keen interest in various aspects of black life in Virginia. In 1902, J. C. Ballagh published A History of Slavery in Virginia in. Johns Hopkins Press series on race and slavery; and between 19t),; and 1930, Beverley Munford, Charles Ambler, John Russell, and Theodore Whitfield wrote on such subjects as the anti-slavery movement, the origin and legal status of free blacks, and the political crises following the publication of David Walker's Appeal and Nat Turner's slave revolt. During the 1930s and 1940s, black scholars Luther Porter Jackson and James. Hugo Johnston analyzed the economic, religious, social, and cultural condition of slaves and free Negroes in the state. Jackson's study, Free Free Negro Labor and Property Holding in Virginia, 1830-1860, culminated more than twenty years of research. In the past quarter-century, historians have explored such topics as slave rebelliousness, industrial slavery, free black slave owners, emigration, and the criminal justice system, among others.