Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge.

By Charles B. Dew (New York: W.W. Norton Inc., 1994. xviii plus 429pp. $27.50).

Charles B. Dew's Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge is a major book that will be enthusiastically welcomed by scholars of southern, African American, and slavery history. It is the mature scholarship of an experienced, seasoned historian. Although Dew writes about a subject--American slavery in the Old South--that has been exhaustively analyzed by a wide assortment of specialists, he successfully manages to break new ground. He accomplishes something unique because of the scope of his study. In a vivid and powerful way, he tells the story of individual slaves and their families over the span of several generations that stretches from the War of 1812 to the Civil War and even beyond the Reconstruction period. Few recent studies have had adequate primary sources at hand to successfully carry out so ambitious a project.

Dew chronicles the story of Buffalo Forge, a sizable ironmaking and farming complex a few miles south of the community of Lexington, Virginia in the western part of the state. In a sparkling narrative, he sharply focuses on the lives of both "masters" and "slaves," and especially their complex interaction with each other Between 1812 and 1861, a Pennsylvania entrepreneur named William Weaver, with the help of relative (husband of his niece) Daniel C.E. Brady, built Buffalo Forge into a major operation that utilized a labor force of seventy "owned slaves" supplemented by a contingent of some one hundred slaves hired on an annual basis as both industrial and agricultural laborers. By the eve of the Civil War, Weaver had elevated himself to the stature of wealthy, successful Virginia planter-industrialist. On the Buffalo Forge property, he held more than 20,000 acres of land and produced a sizable amount of iron bars in his blast furnaces and forges. in his

Slave labor was indispenable to the successful operation of all endeavors at Buffalo Forge. Work requiring high levels of skill (forgeman, teamster, carpenter, and the like) as well as menial unskilled labor, was performed exclusively by black bondsmen. Dew skillfully renders the story of these black workers and their slave communities in a sensitive, informed way that takes into account the nuances and complexities of race, class, and culture. His insights into these issues would no doubt impress a wide variety of scholars, whether they approached the topic from the perspective of Eugene D. Genovese, Ira Berlin, Herbert Gutman, or John Blassingame. He masterfully presents all the important aspects of the cultural elements of the antebellum slave community by delving into family life, religious practices, work rhythms, and forms of resistance found over the years at Buffalo Forge. His considerable writing ability draws the reader into the fabric of the daily life of the slave.

The quantity and quality of primary source material used by Dew are extraordinary. These include records of slave births, illnesses, and deaths as well as the oral tradition of the Buffalo Forge slave community passed down to descendants of those bondsmen. Having at hand such comprehensive source material, along with detailed journals and plantation records, allows the author to write a historical study of slavery, emancipation, and its aftermath like no other. The detailed records even carry the story of Buffalo Forge into the post-Reconstruction years.

Bond of Iron is a well-designed, attractive book that commands admiration. Everything that went into the making of it was done with great care. Based on extensive research in an extraordinary body of primary materials, this well-written study is an important contribution to the body of scholarly literature on American slavery.