Rearing Wolves to Our Own Destruction: Slavery in Richmond Virginia, 1782-1865 (Carter G. Woodson Institute Series)

RICHMOND WAS NOT only the capital of Virginia and of the Confederacy; it was also one
of the most industrialized cities south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Boasting ironworks, tobacco
processing plants, and flour mills, the city by 1860 drew half of its male workforce from the local
slave population. Rearing Wolves to Our Own Destruction examines this unusual
urban labor system from 1782 until the end of the Civil War. Many urban bondsmen and women were
hired to businesses rather than working directly for their owners. As a result, they frequently had
the opportunity to negotiate their own contracts, to live alone, and to keep a portion of their
wages in cash. Working conditions in industrial Richmond enabled African-American men and women
to build a community organized around family networks, black churches, segregated neighborhoods,
secret societies, and aid organizations. Through these institutions, Takagi demonstrates, slaves
were able to educate themselves and to develop their political awareness. They also came to expect a
degree of control over their labor and lives. Richmond's urban slave system offered blacks a level
of economic and emotional support not usually available to plantation slaves. Rearing
Wolves to Our Own Destruction offers a valuable portrait of urban slavery in an individual
city that raises questions about the adaptability of slavery as an institution to an urban setting
and, more importantly, the ways in which slaves were able to turn urban working conditions to their
own advantage.