Bond of Iron
Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge
10 January 1996
Description
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).
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
Awards
Shortlisted — Lincoln Prize, 1995