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Slave Labor on Virginia's Blue Ridge Railroad

Slave Labor on Virginia's Blue Ridge Railroad

Von Lyons, Mary E.

Herausgegeben von The History Press

English 2020 ISBN 9781439669471
eBook

Über dieses Buch

Between 1849 and 1859, Virginia raced to pierce the Blue Ridge Mountains by rail and reach the Ohio River. At least 300 enslaved people labored involuntarily toward that goal, along with 1,500 Irish immigrants. The state leased the labor of enslaved Virginians from local slaveholders, including four connected with nearby University of Virginia. Blue Ridge Tunnel and Blue Ridge Railroad historian Mary E. Lyons explored hundreds of primary documents to write the first nonfiction book about slave labor on a specific antebellum railroad. She shares hundreds of enslaved people's names, traces where they toiled along the line and describes their backbreaking--and sometimes fatal--tasks.
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English
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