Black people enslaved in Augusta married, raised families, and worked at all sorts of jobs, but they were never far removed from the tangled affairs of whites.

At least one enslaved person from Augusta County, Maria Perkins, wrote a letter that survived. Perkins wrote from across the mountains in Charlottesville to her husband in Augusta County to let him know that she and one of their children were to be sold. One of their children, Albert, was already sold, and Perkins did not "want a trader to get me" for she knew that her fate would be entirely unpredictable. Instead, she appealed to her husband to appeal to his "master" to buy her. "Heartsick," her family broken up, her "things" scattered across several counties, Perkins emphasized her precarious position. She estimated that she had little time before the matter was even further out of her already severely constricted control.

While Augusta's enslaved people battled these terrifying experiences, whites wrote dozens of letters barely mentioning their slaves. Only runaway or resistant slaves received attention from whites. "Wilson has run off," one slaveholding mother reported to her lawyer son-in-law, "such a sly negro that he may have more in his head than we know of." Her son-in-law was occupied with buying and selling his "negroes" and his various industrial ventures insuring their lives as well. When another runaway, "Old York," sought refuge at the home of his old master's son, it opened up a whole tangle of family sins and omissions. As property, slaves were bartered and bequeathed, bought and sold, hired out, and sent as gifts. Whites mentioned these transactions in brief notes at the end of letters.

J. Beck, J. Beck to John H. McCue, February 8, 1858

W. W. Gibbs, W. W. Gibbs to John H. McCue, December 18, 1858

Maria Perkins, Maria Perkins to Richard Perkins, October 8, 1852

Industries Using Enslaved Labor (table)

Hiring of Enslaved Persons, Augusta County, 1860 (table)

Related Historiography

Thomas B. Alexander, "Antebellum North and South in Comparative Perspective: A Discussion," American Historical Review 85 (1980): 1150-1154.

Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon, 1975).

Eugene Genovese, The Slaveholders' Dilemma: Freedom and Progress in Southern Conservative Thought, 1820-1860 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1992).

John D. Majewski, A House Dividing: Economic Development in Pennsylvania and Virginia Before the Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Edward Pessen, "How Different from Each Other Were the Antebellum North and South," American Historical Review 85 (1980): 1119-1149.