Money over Mastery, Family over Freedom: Slavery in the Antebellum Upper South

5 Railroaders

chapter 5 Railroaders T he transportation revolution simultaneously transformed an old institution and the new commercial landscape of the antebellum South, changing the lives of enslaved people in the process. railroads and telegraphs integrated interregional markets and sped communications . as in commercial processing, slaves were the primary workforce for railroad construction projects south of the potomac river, and they worked to support the roads once they were in operation. the whine of a whistle or scent of smoke from a steam locomotive, the song of a railroad construction gang, or the sight of an approaching train elicited an ambivalent reaction from enslaved americans. the prospect of being hired to work on a railroad construction gang was met with a mix of exhilaration and trepidation. railroad workers, who were mostly male, anticipated forming connections with others in a military-like organization, but the work was hazardous, repetitive, and punishing. they could also expect to be separated from loved ones. children , parents, and spouses of enslaved railroad workers had much to lose were they hired. they might die or disappear into a distant city for a year, be broken on a section gang, or else taken beyond reach permanently. Some Virginia Railroaders 165 slaves were hired to build railroads in florida. to all slaves, the railroad was a conveyance to places of no return for the black bodies deposited. relatives and friends also faced fears that were common among all antebellum railroading families. mixing in with tens, perhaps hundreds, of strangers he might be taken ill, injured, or return with his spirit dimmed, piety diminished, and habits corrupted. but there was also a strategic aspect to getting into such a line of work.1 railroad development incorporated local ties among the enslaved into the transportation revolution of antebellum america, giving enslaved people advantages they had not had before. companies employed enslaved laborers to construct new roads, maintain existing tracks, service trains in depots, and ride the rails as fireman, brakeman, porters, and stewards. a few former slaves even served as engineers. as they became indispensable to railroad construction , operation, and maintenance, enslaved people used the railroad to their own ends, gathering human and capital resources and turning labor camps into fraternal organizations and even educational institutions. roads broadened the reach of enslaved people’s networks. Working on the railroad could offer a chance to earn cash, hone a skill, or even learn to read and write. but the architects of the new market created efficiencies that also tended to undermine the advantages enslaved people could take of it. on occasion, railroads paid high prices to own slaves. more often, they paid owners high wages and, like urban manufacturers, some paid cash to slaves as incentives to work. as a consequence of an interregional slave market, railroad contractors in Virginia and north carolina competed with lower South cotton planters for slave labor , just as their counterparts in the tobacco industry did. insurance companies helped to rationalize the market for industrial slave labor by insuring the lives of slaves engaged in railroad and other hazardous work, which protected owners financially and limited liabilities of employers. each incremental step in market integration squeezed more work out of the enslaved and put their families in increasing peril.2 like commercial processing, railroad development in the lower chesapeake hardly signaled slavery’s attenuation. by the late 1830s, locomotives fueled by slave-dug coal chugged into cities such as richmond and norfolk on slavelaid tracks, bringing slave-grown corn and tobacco to market. they returned to the hinterland with enslaved people bought with the proceeds. enslaved porters unloaded the trains, and the slaves sold at market wore slave-forged chains. transportation technology transformed the slave market. in the 1820s 166 Money over Mastery, Family over Freedom and 1830s, enslaved people bound away to the lower South could expect to be driven in droves, packed onto ships, or floated down rivers. in the 1840s, they were more likely to undertake the forced march on foot over the expanding network of roadways, many the results of state and federal internal improvement initiatives. by the 1850s, enslaved people were increasingly likely to disappear from their families on railroad cars, which were financed in part from the proceeds of slave sales and sponsored by states. the majority were still marched south, footsore and forlorn, but the new technologies, which enabled railroads to reach into new corners of an expanding commercial...