Worlds

When they invested in steamboats, railroads, roads, education, communication routes, and other infrastructure, Feliciana elites advanced the national and global transportation revolution. They used enslaved convict laborers to build railroads and to work on them. Meanwhile, small numbers of immigrants moved there, including German Jews in St. Francisville. They lived alongside free Black residents, a group who also occupied a precarious position. Some free Black people acquired property and exercised limited citizenship rights. This all rested on chattel slavery, and between 1800 and 1860 this region became central to the early republic and cotton production. But in this “Age of Emancipations,” these bondspersons survived, celebrated, and sometimes resisted.