In more recent years historians have acknowledged the fact that certainly during the period around 1790 skilled slaves were the only artisans in the colony.

Rice production in particular suffered, since it depended on a labor force of skilled slaves performing carefully timed tasks.

The explanation is perhaps economic; even a skilled slave was cheap, so it may have been cheaper to purchase a slave than to raise one.

In contrast, tobacco planters desired skilled male slaves, while women were mainly responsible for breeding and raising children.

And you killed a skilled slave, a concubine!

Fu Yue was originally a slave, skilled at making walls for defense.

Slaveholders leased skilled slaves for jobs available in Virginia industries.

As was true for many antebellum buildings, the workmen were also skilled slaves.

For hours at a time a skilled slave would work in cramped position, hardly able to swing his hammer.

In the 1850s there were so many skilled slaves in Marshall, that white mechanics organized to protest that work was being taken away from "free" workers.