The list I sent was in no way intended to be complete. It was what I  
came up with off the top of my head. Over the years I have compiled  
an 82 page bibliography on iron and the early iron industry. My  
primary interest was the technology and archaeology, not industrial  
slavery. More than happy to provide it to anyone who wants. I can  
send it as Word, PDF, or a variety of other formats.

Lyle Browning also has a lot of information that he had produced or  
digitized from the work of Tom Brady on the iron industry and on the  
Richmond coal mines.

There are a lot of references written by people who do not understand  
how iron was made. These should be used with extreme caution. But  
then you have to know enough to separate the wheat from the chaff.  
Even experienced and respected historians make mistakes, as they are  
often not archaeometallurgists. We all make the occasional whopper  
(hopefully not in print though!).

James Brothers, RPA
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On Jun 19, 2007, at 17:21, Stephan A. Schwartz wrote:

> James is making what I believe is a very significant point, and I  
> very much appreciate his references, only some of which have  
> crossed my ken.  I am doing research right now for a book I am  
> writing about Benjamin Franklin.  In the course of which it has  
> been impressed upon me, how much of the South's technical  
> competence and craftsmanship resided in the brains and hands of  
> Black men and women.  The craft communities of wheel makers, barrel  
> makers, nail makers, glassworkers, ironworkers, saddle and harness  
> makers, cabinetmakers, and such,  all included amongst their  
> numbers a significant percentage of African-Americans, slave or  
> freedmen, or slaves who were allowed to live on their own, and who  
> basically paid rent on themselves back to their owners. (The  
> ethical weirdness this presents in the 21st century was largely  
> overlooked, if not entirely unremarked in the 18th and 19th).
>
> -- Stephan