Enslaved labor was integral to Augusta's industries--woolen mills, distilleries, flour mills, lumber mills, and iron foundries--while skilled white artisan shops were small in number and scale and virtually free of enslaved labor.

Nearly all of the largest slaveholders in Augusta owned industrial enterprises. The manufacturing census shows that most of these large businesses employed just one or two white wage workers to run, for example, a flour mill or saw mill. When the proprietors listed in the manufacturing census are cross-checked with the slaveowner schedule, the connections between enslaved labor and these industries becomes clear. In distilleries 13 out of 18 business owners were slaveholders, in the flour mills 24 out of 43, in lumber 5 out of 7, in sawmills 12 out of 19, in iron foundries 4 out of 4. Many of these slaveholders owned over 10 enslaved people and probably deployed them in a range of work throughout their holdings, from farm to mill. White artisans in Augusta, on the other hand, held almost no enslaved persons. Just 3 of 16 blacksmiths held enslaved people (each of the three held two), while 1 of 5 carriage makers, and none the five coopers held any.

Augusta used enslaved labor to boost its low-capital, high-labor industries while Franklin concentrated on high-skilled industries. The manufacturing census reveals striking similarity in the relative percentage of the costs of raw materials and labor, and in the value of products produced by manufacturing establishments. Sixty-six percent of the value of products in both places was the cost of raw materials, while 14 percent of the value was the cost of labor. Capital investment by industry in Augusta and Franklin revealed a distinct difference--Augusta concentrated its capital investment in low-skill industries, such as lumber mills, iron foundries, and distilleries, where enslaved labor could be exploited to advantage, while Franklin concentrated on investment in skilled artisanal industries, such as leather goods and tinning.

Annual Value of Manufacturing Per Capita, 1860 (graph)

Capital Investment by Industry, 1860 (table)

Industries Using Enslaved Labor (table)

Regional Comparison (table)

Related Historiography

Fred Bateman and Thomas Weiss, A Deplorable Scarcity: The Failure of Industrialization in the Slave Economy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981).

Kenneth W. Noe, Southwest Virginia's Railroad: Modernization and the Sectional Crisis (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994).

Harry L. Watson, Jacksonian Politics and Community Conflict: The Emergence of the Second American Party System in Cumberland County, North Carolina (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981).

Harry L. Watson, Jacksonian Politics and Community Conflict: The Emergence of the Second American Party System in Cumberland County, North Carolina (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981).