Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South
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The Confederate States of America was born in defense of slavery but, after a four-year struggle to become an independent slaveholding republic, died as emancipation dawned. Between Fort Sumter and Appomattox, Confederates bought and sold thousands of 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.
Robert Colby
Robert Colby is an award-winning scholar and teacher of United States history. His first book, An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South (Oxford University Press, 2024), won the Nau Book Prize from the John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History, the 2025 Nonfiction Award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, and was a finalist for the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. His work on the domestic slave trade during the Civil War has previously won prizes from the Society of American Historians and the Society of Civil War Historians. Originally from Virginia (where he grew up walking Civil War battlefields), he is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Mississippi.