Kanawha Canal

In Virginia and across the United States, rivers and canals were the main avenues of commerce, with goods moved from Atlantic and American ports onto smaller vessels and bateaus that carried them inland, while enslaved men often labored on these boats transporting hogsheads of tobacco from plantations to cities for sale and export. Tobacco, a highly productive cash crop in the Upper South, demanded intensive labor and exhausted the soil, leading many farms to shift to grains and vegetables; on these post-tobacco plantations, enslaved people were sometimes subjected to less severe physical demands and task-based labor systems that could allow marriage, family life, and hiring themselves out, though only at the discretion of enslavers. Conditions were much harsher in the Lower South, where after the invention of the cotton gin in 1793 the demand for labor soared and enslaved Africans were driven from first light until full dark under overseers to cultivate cotton, sugar, and tobacco, often without land for their own food or time to build adequate shelter. Intended to connect the tidewaters of the James River with the navigable stretches of the Ohio River, the Kanawha Canal was an ambitious project built through the back-breaking labor of thousands; between 1836 and 1837 its workforce grew from 1,440 to 3,330 men, mostly white Irish immigrants, but extreme heat in the summer of 1838 killed many laborers and prompted two-thirds of the remainder to flee north. Enslaved workers, treated as chattel and believed impervious to harsh conditions, labored along the James River through winter, summer fever season, and nearly all weather, becoming the majority of the workforce by 1839, and by 1850 some were becoming stonemasons.

Richmond, Virginia · United States