A troublesome commerce : the transformation of the interstate slave trade / Robert H. Gudmestad.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gudmestad, Robert H., 1964-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Slave trade--United States.

Slave trade.

United States.

Physical Description:

xii, 246 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [2003]

Summary:

When Congress outlawed the international slave trade in 1807, the initially small and sporadic practice of selling slaves from one state to another quickly expanded. In this revealing study, Robert H. Gudmestad provides an in-depth examination of the growth and development of the interstate slave trade during the early nineteenth century, using the business as a means to explore economic change, the culture of honor, master-slave relationships, and the justification of slavery in the antebellum South.

In tracing the transformation of this troublesome commerce into a southern scapegoat, Gudmestad also charts the changes that occurred concurrently in southern notions about slavery and southern identity. This provocative work proves the interstate slave trade to be vital to the making--and understanding--of the paradoxical antebellum South.

Contents:

Introduction: the problem of speculation

The strands of forced migration

Slave resistance, coffles, and the debates over slavery in the nation's capital

The interstate slave trade and the Southern imagination : the Upper South

The interstate slave trade and the southern imagination : the Lower South

Profits and piety

The trade transformed

Speculation triumphant

Epilogue : a troubled legacy.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [211]-242) and index.

ISBN:

0807128848

0807129224

OCLC:

52153836