The Northern Manufacturers of Southern Plantation Goods

Plantation owners in the Southern United States regularly furnished their enslaved workers with goods – clothing, shoes, axes, and shovels, that had been manufactured in the North. Many Northern manufacturers specifically targeted the Southern plantation market, enticed by the prospect of selling cheap goods on a regular schedule. While in some cases the Northern manufacturers supported surprising politics – joining the Republican Party and donating to Abolitionist causes – they had no qualms about making their money in an industry adjacent to the slave economy. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Seth Rockman, Associate Professor of History at Brown University and author of Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Relaxing Enchanted Piano” by Mikhail Smusev from Pixabay and is used under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is “Brogans, Manufacturer Little & Co., third quarter 19th century,” Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of Herman Delman, 1955; image is in the public domain.

Additional sources:

• “In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation,” by Matthew Desmond, The New York Times Magazine, August 14, 2019.
• “Industrialization and Conflict in America: 1840–1875,” by David Jaffee, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. 
• “8. The Market Revolution,” The American Yawp.
• “Industry and Economy during the Civil War,” by Benjamin T. Arrington, National Park Service.
• “In search of slave clothes: A museum director’s hunt for a painful symbol,” by J. Freedom du Lac, The Washington Post, January 20, 2012.
• “Antebellum Tariff Politics: Regional Coalitions and Shifting Economic Interests,” by Douglas A. Irwin, The Journal of Law & Economics 51, no. 4 (2008): 715–41. 

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