The "superior cotton hoes" featured here were likely manufactured in Connecticut by workers on the front edge of the Industrial Revolution. The iron might have come from Sweden, Russia, or Pennsylvania, tying yet other workers far removed from plantation spaces to the infrastructure of slavery. 3/7

The long-distance trade in these goods ran almost exclusively on credit-- so if New England manufacturers (and workers) and New York merchants wanted to be paid, they had to hope that enslaved men and women would produce cotton in record quantities. 4/7