Divided Mastery explores a interestingly overlooked point of the historical past of yank slavery: the apartment of slaves. notwithstanding few slaves escaped being rented out sooner or later of their lives, this can be the 1st booklet to explain the perform, and its results on either slaves and the bizarre establishment.

Martin unearths how the original triangularity of slave hiring created slaves with masters, hence remodeling the common polarity of master-slave relationships. Drawing upon slaveholders' letters, slave narratives, interviews with former slaves, legislative petitions, and courtroom documents, Divided Mastery eventually finds that slave hiring's importance was once paradoxical.

The perform reinforced the approach of slavery via facilitating its unfold into the western territories, by way of democratizing entry to slave exertions, and via selling either construction and hypothesis with slave capital. yet whilst, slaves used hiring to their virtue, discovering in it the most important possibilities to form their paintings and kinfolk lives, to convey proprietors and hirers into clash with one another, and to destabilize the procedure of bondage. Martin illuminates the significance of the capitalist industry as a device for interpreting slavery and its prolonged relationships. via its clean and intricate standpoint, Divided Mastery demonstrates that slave hiring is necessary to figuring out the elemental nature of yankee slavery, and its social, political, and fiscal position within the previous South.

Table of Contents:

advent: Slaves with Masters
1 Slave Hiring within the Evolution of Slavery
2 A Blessing and a Curse
three hazards and Returns
four Compromised Mastery
five Resistance and Abuse
6 operating Alone
Epilogue

Abbreviations
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

"This finely crafted, thought-provoking examine of slave hiring within the antebellum South fills an immense hole within the historic literature. Divided Mastery could be of significant curiosity to scholars of yank slavery."
--Peter Kolchin, writer of American Slavery, 1619-1877

"Divided Mastery enormously extends and systematizes our wisdom of slave hiring as a tradition making slavery a extra economically versatile establishment. Martin additionally writes insightfully in regards to the emotional and mental complexities attending the interplay of slaves, vendors, and hirers. this can be the normal reference for historians attracted to slave hiring, and Martin's energetic prose kind may still allure a much broader readership to boot for this tremendous new book."
--T. Stephen Whitman, writer of Challenging Slavery within the Chesapeake, 1775-1865

"Martin has performed greater than fill a tremendous area of interest in figuring out slavery within the American South; his paintings provides an appreciation of the complexity of slavery via unraveling--in fantastic detail--precisely how the process of slave hiring labored. It finds how the condo of slaves immediately increased and limited the range of either grasp and slave, now and then permitting slaveholders to realize higher flexibility and revenue within the employment in their human estate and allowing slaves to safe better independence and keep watch over over their very own lives. Divided Mastery is an important addition to the literature on slavery within the US."
--Ira Berlin, writer of Generations of Captivity: A background of African-American Slaves