DEW, Charles B(urgess) 1937-

PERSONAL: Born January 5, 1937, in St. Petersburg, FL; son of Jack Carlos and Amy (Meek) Dew; married Robb Reavill Forman (a novelist), January 26, 1968; children: Charles Stephen, John Forman. Education: Williams College, A.B., 1958; Johns Hopkins University, Ph.D., 1964.

ADDRESSES: Home—218 Bulkley St., Williamstown, MA 01267-2023. Office—Department of History, Williams College, 880 Main St., Williamstown, MA 01267.

CAREER: Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, instructor, 1963-64, assistant professor of history, 1964-65; Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, assistant professor of history, 1965-68; visiting associate professor, University of Virginia, 1970-71; University of Missouri, Columbia, associate professor, 1968-72, professor of history, 1972-78; Williams College, Williamstown, MA, visiting professor, 1977-78, professor of history, 1978-85, Class of 1956 professor of American studies, 1985-96, chair of department of history, 1986-92, director of Francis C. Oakley Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, 1994-97; W. Van Alan Clark Third Century Professor in the Social Sciences, 1996—.

MEMBER: American Historical Association, Organization of American Historians (Elliott Rudwick award, 1995), Southern Historical Association (member of executive council, 1975-78), Virginia Historical Society, Phi Beta Kappa, Delta Psi.

AWARDS, HONORS: Fletcher Pratt Award, Civil War Round Table of New York, 1966, for Ironmaker to the Confederacy: Joseph R. Anderson and the Tredegar Ironworks; Award of merit, American Association for State and Local History, 1967; finalist for 1995 Lincoln prize.

WRITINGS:

Ironmaker to the Confederacy: Joseph R. Anderson and the Tredegar Ironworks, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1966, 2nd edition, Library of Virginia (Richmond, VA), 1999.

(Contributor) Origins of the New South, 1877-1913, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1971.

(Editor, with T. C. Cochran and T. H. Williams) The Meanings of American History: Interpretations of Events, Ideas, and Institutions, Volume 2: Civil War to the Present, Scott, Foresman (Glenview, IL), 1972.

(Contributor) Region, Race, and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Van Woodward, revised edition, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1982.

(Contributor) Science and Medicine in the Old South, edited by Ronald L. Numbers and Todd L. Savitt, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1989.

(Editorial adviser) Slavery in Ante-Bellum Southern Industries, guide to microfilm edition compiled by Martin P. Schipper, University Publications of America (Bethesda, MD), 1991-96.

Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge, W. W. Norton (New York, NY), 1994.

(Contributor) Encyclopedia of Slavery, Garland Publishing (New York, NY), 1997.

Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War, in series A Nation Divided: New Studies in Civil War History, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 2001.

Contributor to periodicals, including South Atlantic Quarterly, Louisiana History, Civil War History, American Historical Review, Journal of Southern History, and William and Mary Quarterly.

SIDELIGHTS: Historian and educator Charles B. Dew was among the first to write about industrial slavery in the United States, particularly in the antebellum and Civil-War South. In the late 1990s he was considered among the best of the revisionist historians, acclaimed for both his meticulous research and his narrative skills.

In a review of Dew's Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge for The Southern Review, Joseph P. Reidy wrote, "Dew is the preeminent historian of industrial slavery in the United States....The social historian . . . must work with the tools of the craft: meticulous research, comparative examination of all sources, the teasing of facts and understanding from between the lines of material intended for purposes other than historical documentation. On this level Dew's work is a masterpiece." Reidy also called Bond of Iron "a model of narrative prose," and wrote, "Here is a clear case where style enriches substance."

A Publishers Weekly contributor wrote of Bond of Iron: "This is an original, unusually detailed contribution to the study of slavery....Dew makes accessible to all the essential dignity of the slaves he studies here."

Bond of Iron is a detailed account of the black slaves who worked for white Pennsylvania businessman William Weaver, who invested in iron smelting in Virginia during the War of 1812. Over the years, he saw the merits of using black slave labor. By the 1850s Weaver's iron works at Buffalo Forge had become one of the most successful in Virginia, thanks to the skill of eleven slaves he had purchased in 1815 and their families. Sons learned ironworking skills from apprenticeship to their fathers, keeping well-honed skills within the business. The key to Weaver's success with his crew was the "overwork" system, whereby slaves earned wages equal to those of free skilled craftsmen for all hours worked above a weekly quota. This system gave slaves greater incentive to work and enabled them to provide well for their families and even save money. Weaver was a kind master who never once whipped a slave and was admired by those who worked for him. Through careful research that includes slave birth and death records, Weaver's journals and account books, and the oral slave tradition of the period, Dew tells the story of the Buffalo Forge families through the Civil War and into the Reconstruction period.

In a review of Bond of Iron for the Journal of Social History, Walter T. Howard wrote, "In a sparkling narrative, he [Dew] sharply focuses on the lives of both 'masters' and 'slaves,' and especially their complex interaction with each other....Dew skillfully renders the story of these black workers and their slave communities in a sensitive, informed way that takes into account the nuances and complexities of race, class, and culture."

Indeed, the slave Sam Williams and his forge crew had ample control over the iron works at Buffalo Forge. Reviewing Bond of Iron for Reviews in American History, Alex Lichtenstein wrote, "More convincing is Dew's superb account of slave resistance, exemplified by work slowdowns, industrial sabotage, or outright refusal to work. Clearly a combination of their irreplaceable skills and the overwork system allowed Weaver's slave artisans to dictate the pace of work at the furnace and forge....Dew never loses sight of the fact that the slaveowner set the conditions under which slaves made their own history....But working within this system slave ironworkers clearly demonstrated that 'coercion had its limits.' Men like Sam Williams endured slavery while preserving their dignity, pride in labor, and commitment to family as resources they and their descendants could and did draw upon in freedom. This tale of the past, Bond of Iron recounts with unparalleled authenticity and imagination."

In a review of Dew's Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War, a contributor to the University Press of Virginia's Web site wrote that Dew "offers a compelling and clearly substantiated argument that slavery and race were absolutely critical factors in the outbreak of war—indeed, that they were at the heart of our great national crisis." Dew's sources for Apostles of Disunion were public letters and speeches made by commissioners who traveled throughout the South during 1860 and 1861 persuading citizens to support their state's secession from the Union. These illuminating documents provide extraordinary insight into the mind-set of those who led the nation toward civil war.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Directory of American Scholars, 10th edition, Volume 1: History, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2001.

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, December, 1995, John C. Willis, review of Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge, p. 1679.

Black Scholar, summer, 1994, review of Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge, p. 74.

Book World, July 17, 1994, review of Bond of Iron, p. 3.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, October, 2001, R. A. Fischer, review of Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War, p. 374.

Economist, April 1, 1995, review of Bond of Iron, p. 72.

Historian, autumn, 1995, review of Bond of Iron, p. 118.

History: The Journal of the Historical Association, October, 1996, John White, review of Bond of Iron, p. 590.

Journal of Social History, fall, 1995, Walter T. Howard, review of Bond of Iron, p. 229.

Journal of the Early Republic, spring, 1995, Carol Wilson, review of Bond of Iron, p. 146.

Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 1994, review of Bond of Iron, p. 357.

Library Journal, April 1, 1994, Jamie S. Hansen, review of Bond of Iron, p. 115.

New York Times Book Review, June 12, 1994, Drew Gilpin Faust, review of Bond of Iron, p. 16; April 22, 2001, Allen D. Boyer, review of Apostles of Disunion, p. 28.

Publishers Weekly, March 28, 1994, review of Bond of Iron, p. 73.

Reviews in American History, March, 1995, Alex Lichtenstein, review of Bond of Iron, p. 20.

Southern Review, spring, 1996, Joseph P. Reidy, review of Bond of Iron, p. 373.

Wall Street Journal (Eastern Edition), July 27, 1994, David Shribman, review of Bond of Iron, p. A8.

William and Mary Quarterly, July, 1995, review of Bond of Iron, p. 569.

ONLINE

University Press of Virginia,http://www.upress.virginia.edu/ (November 28, 2001), review of Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War.*