Slavery, Work, and the Geography of the North Carolina Naval Stores Industry, 1835-1860

THE METHODS EMPLOYED IN HARVESTING TURPENTINE COMBINED WITH geography of southeastern North Carolina pine forests created special difficulties for mid-nineteenth-century naval stores producers and even more daunting challenges for their laborers. The expansion of naval stores production after 1830, various procedures involved in harvesting turpentine, size and location of turpentine forests, and ways that these three factors affected slave management practices created a unique work and ... manner of life for laborers in naval stores industry. Although nineteenth-century observers and twentieth-century historians have remarked that workers commonly preferred labor in turpentine forests to that in plantation fields, in fact, labor force of naval stores industry, which was composed predominantly of slaves, endured harsher working and living conditions than bondsmen on a typical agricultural plantation and, as a result, resisted their treatment. The experiences of laborers in turpentine forests and camps therefore represent a unique facet of slave experience. An analysis of slave labor in naval stores industry supports Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan's argument that the legacy of slavery cannot be understood without a full appreciation of way in which slaves worked.1 These historians maintain that, because slavery was above all an institution of forced labor and slaves spent most of their time at work, studies that focus on slave families, religion, and culture while important, describe only a portion of bondsman's life. If