Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge

Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge

A study of African-American workers empowered and partly liberated by their skills. 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 ). "Brings to touching, disturbing light aspects of the complex economic and emotional relationships that existed between slave and master." ― Michael Dorris, Los Angeles Times "Enriches our understanding of the human as well as the larger social and economic meaning of American slavery." ― Drew Gilpin Faust, New York Times Book Review "Perhaps the clearest picture of slave life ever. . . . A big window on a world that shaped our own." ― David Shribman, Wall Street Journal Buffalo Forge was an extensive ironmaking and farming enterprise located near Lexington in the Valley of Virginia. During the antebellum years, almost every job there, skilled and unskilled alike, was performed by slave labor. Records of the lives of these workers--records unique in their completeness and rich detail--have survived, an invaluable addition to American history. In the hands of a skillful historian, they provide an extraordinary opportunity to reconstruct the stories of slaves and masters in all their economic and emotional complexity. Charles B. Dew is Class of 1956 Professor of American Studies at Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts.