Southern cotton planters and Northern textile mill owners maintained what has been called "an unholy alliance between the lords of the lash and the lords of the loom." This collection of essays focuses on the central role of slavery in the early development of industrialization in the United States as well as on the interconnections among the histories of African Americans, women, and labor.

Introduction: The Meaning of Slavery in the North, Robert L. Hall * Economic Impact of the Slave Trade on Textile Industrialization in New England, Ronald Bailey * Slavery, Antislavery, and Northern Industry, Myron O. Stachiw * Slavery in the North, Thomas H. O'Connor * Southern Whiggery and Economic Development, Larry K. Menna * The Northern Churches and the Moral Problem of Slavery, John R. McKivigan * Feminist Abolitionists in Boston and Philadelphia, Carolyn Williams * Reading Women into Antislavery History, Deborah Bingham Van Broekhoven * Blackface Minstrelsy, Vernacular Comics, and the Politics of Slavery in the North, Alexander Saxton