An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South        Robert K.D. Colby, Oxford University Press, 360 pages, $35.00, 2024

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The Confederate States of America was born in defense of slavery and, after a four-year struggle to become an independent slaveholding republic, died as emancipation dawned. Between Fort Sumter to Appomattox, Confederates bought and sold thousands African American men, women, and children. 

These transactions in humanity made the internal slave trade a cornerstone of Confederate society, a bulwark of the Rebel economy, and a central part of the experience of the Civil War for all inhabiting the American South.

As An Unholy Traffic shows, slave trading helped Southerners survive and fight the Civil War, as well as to build the future for which they fought. They mitigated the crises the war spawned by buying and selling enslaved people, using this commerce to navigate food shortages, unsettled gender roles, the demands of military service, and other hardships on the home front. 

Some Rebels speculated wildly in human property, investing in slaves to ward off inflation and to buy shares in the slaveholding nation they hoped to create. Others traded people to counter the advance of emancipation. Given its centrality to their nationhood, Confederates went to great lengths to prolong the slave trade, which, in turn, supported the Confederacy. 

For those held in slavery, the surviving slave trade dramatically shaped their pursuit of freedom, inserting a retrograde movement into some people's journeys toward liberty while inspiring others to make the risky decision to escape.

Offering an original perspective on the intersections of slavery, capitalism, the Civil War, and emancipation, Robert K.D. Colby illuminates the place of the peculiar institution within the Confederate mind, the ways in which it underpinned the CSA's war effort, and its impact on those attempting to seize their freedom.

Introduction
Chapter 1: "No Money, and No Confidence": Slave Commerce, Secession, and the Panic of 1860
Chapter 2: The "Uncongenial Air of Freedom": Union Occupation and the Slave Trade
Chapter 3: "Old Abe Is Not Feared in this Region": The Revival of Confederate Slave Commerce
Chapter 4: "Negroes Will Bear Fabulous Prices": Inflation, Speculation, and the Confederate Future
Chapter 5: "Liable to Be Sold at Any Moment": State-Making, Continuity, and the Slave Trade
Chapter 6: Sold "Far Out of the Way of Lincoln": Emancipation and Counterrevolutionary Slave Commerce
Chapter 7: "Broke...All Up": The Ends and Afterlives of the Wartime Slave Trade
Epilogue, Notes, Select Bibliography, Index

Author  Interview   

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/an-unholy-traffic-slave-trading-in-the-civil-war/id1729723969?i=1000655641457

 

2024  Society of Civil War Historians Watson Brown Book

War on Record: The Archive and the Afterlife of the Civil War Hardcover, Yale University Press, $38.00, 320 pages, 2023.

Winner of the 2024 Tom Watson Brown Book Award •and Shortlisted for the 2024 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize The Civil War generated a vast archive of official records—documents that would shape the postwar era and determine what future generations would know about the war. Yael Sternhell traces these records from their creation during wartime through their deployment in a host of postwar battles, including those between the federal government and Southerners seeking reparations and between veterans blaming each other for defeat.   These documents were eventually published in the most important historical collection ever to have been assembled in the United States: The War of the Rebellion: The Official Records of the Union and the Confederate Armies. Known as the OR, it is the ultimate source for generations of scholars and writers and ordinary citizens researching the war. By delving into the archive, Sternhell reveals its power to shape myths, hide truths, perpetuate rancor, and foster reconciliation. Far more than a storehouse of papers, the Civil War archive is a major historical actor in its own right.   The Civil War generated a vast archive of official records—documents that would shape the postwar era and determine what future generations would know about the war. Yael Sternhell traces these records from their creation during wartime through their deployment in a host of postwar battles, including those between the federal government and Southerners seeking reparations and between veterans blaming each other for defeat.   These documents were eventually published in the most important historical collection ever to have been assembled in the United States: The War of the Rebellion: The Official Records of the Union and the Confederate Armies. Known as the OR, it is the ultimate source for generations of scholars and writers and ordinary citizens researching the war. By delving into the archive, Sternhell reveals its power to shape myths, hide truths, perpetuate rancor, and foster reconciliation. Far more than a storehouse of papers, the Civil War archive is a major historical actor in its own right.

Sexual Violence and American Slavery: The Making of a Rape Culture in the Antebellum South, Shannon Eaves,

University Of North Carolina Press, April 2024, 242 pages, paper, $27.95

From the publisher:   It is impossible to separate histories of sexual violence and the enslavement of Black women in the antebellum South. Rape permeated the lives of all who existed in that system: Black and white, male and female, adult and child, enslaved and free. Shannon C. Eaves unflinchingly investigates how both enslaved people and their enslavers experienced the systematic rape and sexual exploitation of bondswomen and came to understand what this culture of sexualized violence meant for themselves and others.

Eaves mines a wealth of primary sources including autobiographies, diaries, court records, and more to show that rape and other forms of sexual exploitation entangled slaves and slave owners in battles over power to protect oneself and one's community, power to avenge hurt and humiliation, and power to punish and eliminate future threats. By placing sexual violence at the center of the systems of power and culture, Eaves shows how the South's rape culture was revealed in enslaved people's and their enslavers' interactions with one another and with members of their respective communities.

Author Interview Podcast: paste into browser

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sexual-violence-and-american-slavery-the making/id1729723969 i=1000668269870