“Rachel Made Moses a Scarlet Waistcoat”

Plantations in the Chesapeake region experienced economic uncertainty as the American Revolution approached. Planters had adopted the violent system of chattel slavery to provide laborers to cultivate tobacco as the cash crop. However, disruptions in trade cut off overseas markets and planters looked for ways to become self-sufficient. While this quest for self-sufficiency was never completely successful, the utilization of the coerced labor of enslaved women to produce clothing and textiles made a major contribution to plantation profitability. This labor is the subject of this article. The diaries of Martha Forman, wife of proprietor Thomas Forman of Rose Hill Plantation in Maryland, document the labor of a group enslaved women, identified by name, who produced clothing for the plantation community, enslaved and free, from 1814 to 1845, thus contributing to its profitability. W. Emerson Wilson transcribed the diaries, published as Life at Rose Hill, in 1976.