Hardcover. Syracuse NY, Syracuse University Press, 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn dust jacket with fading to spine, 236 pages. This foremost history of the Northern slave system examines its operation from its colonial beginnings to its dissolution. Unlike the South, which used slaves primarily for agricultural labor, the North trained and diversified its slave force to meet the needs of a complicated economy. In the early 19th century the author sees that economic displacement allows an emancipation of blacks that is at least as beneficial to the masters as to the blacks. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.