An unholy traffic : slave trading in the Civil War South / Robert K.D. Colby.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Colby, Robert K. D., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Slave trade--Southern States--History--19th century.

Slave trade.

Slavery--Economic aspects--Southern States.

Slavery.

Slave trade--United States--History--19th century.

Slavery--Economic aspects--United States.

United States--History--1849-1877.

United States.

Slavery--Economic aspects.

Southern States.

Genre:

History

Physical Description:

xi, 344 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

Other Title:

Slave trading in the Civil War South

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2024]

Summary:

"During the American Civil War, Confederates bought and sold thousands of men, women, and children. A robust and surviving slave trade, the extension of a traffic that had emerged to support the rise of the Cotton Kingdom, enabled them to do so. Even though the war destroyed the economy that had long underpinned American slavery, Confederates nevertheless traded people from Fort Sumter to Appomattox. Some took advantage of the enduring slave trade to shape their experiences of the war, using their ability to force people into motion to mobilize for the conflict or to weather the numerous crises it created on the homefront. Others speculated wildly, investing in the enslaved during the war to ward off inflation and to buy shares in the slaveholding future for which they fought. Still others traded people to ward off the progress of emancipation. For those held in slavery, meanwhile, the surviving slave trade dramatically shaped the ways in which they encountered freedom, preventing many from achieving it by yanking them back into bondage even as it inspired others to take the risk of escaping. The Civil War slave trade thus profoundly shaped the experience of the conflict for all residents of the American South. Regardless of the choices they made--to buy or to sell people, to risk sale or to flee from it--the effects of the slave trade reverberated throughout the conflict and produced legacies that endured long after the guns fell silent"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

"No Money, and No Confidence" : Slave Trading, Secession, and the Panic of 1860

The "Uncongenial Air of Freedom" : Union Occupation and the Slave Trade

"Old Abe Is Not Feared in this Region" : The Revival of Confederate Slave Commerce

"Negroes Will Bear Fabulous Prices" : Inflation, Speculation, and the Confederate Future

"Liable to Be Sold at Any Moment" : State-Making, Continuity, and the Slave Trade

Sold "Far Out of the Way of Lincoln" : Emancipation and Counterrevolutionary Slave Commerce

"Broke...All Up" : The Ends and Afterlives of the Wartime Slave Trade.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [325]-335) and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Colby, Robert K.D. Unholy traffic

ISBN:

9780197578261

0197578268

OCLC:

1398463162