Ever since W.E.B. du Bois conceptualized slaves' self-emancipation during the U.S. Civil War as a "general strike," the language of labor history has informed scholarly understandings of slavery. While the analogy of the plantation to the factory has its obvious limitations, historians have understood slaves and slaveholders as engaged in recognizable struggles over the speed of work, the ownership of time and expertise, and the informal rights...
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History