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Subject
- Ballard, Rice C. (Rice Carter)
- Franklin and Armfield (Firm)--History
- Slave trade--United States--History--19th century
- Armfield, John
- Slavery--Economic aspects--United States
- Franklin, Isaac
- Slaves--United States--Social conditions--19th century
- Slave traders--Virginia--Alexandria--History--19th century
- Slave traders--Mississippi--Natchez--History--19th century
Availability
Availability Label | Location | Shelfmark | Availability | Reservations |
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Central Branch | Non 306.3620973 Rot | Copies Available |
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Full Record Details Table
Title Statement | The ledger and the chain: how domestic slave traders shaped America / Joshua D. Rothman. |
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Alternative Title(s) | How domestic slave traders shaped America |
Author | Rothman, Joshua D |
Publication | ©2021New York, NY: Basic Books, Hachette Book Group,2021. |
Edition | First edition. |
Extent of Item | xi, 491 pages |
ISBN | 9781541616615 1541616618 |
Other Number | 3962465 |
Contents | Origins, 1789-1815 -- Choices, 1815-1827 -- Associates, 1827-1830 -- Currencies, 1830-1833 -- Dissolutions, 1833-1837 -- Reputations, 1837-1846 -- Legacies, 1846-1871 -- The ledger and the chain. |
Bibliography | Includes bibliographical references (pages 379-466) and index. |
Summary | Joshua D. Rothman tells the disturbing story of the Franklin and Armfield company and the men who built it into the largest and most powerful slave trading company in the United States. In so doing, he reveals the central importance of the domestic slave trade to the development of American capitalism and the expansion of the American nation. Few slave traders were more successful than Isaac Franklin, John Armfield, and Rice Ballard, who ran Franklin and Armfield, and none were more influential. Drawing on source material from more than thirty archives in a dozen states, Rothman follows the three traders through their first meetings, the rise of their firm, and its eventual dissolution. Responsible for selling between 8,000 and 12,000 slaves from the Upper South to Deep South plantations over a period of eight years in the 1830s, they ran an extensive and innovative operation, with offices in New Orleans and Alexandria in Louisiana and Natchez in Mississippi. They advertised widely, borrowed heavily from bankers and other creditors, extended long term credit to their buyers, and had ships built to take slaves from Virginia down to New Orleans. Slavers are often misremembered as pariahs of more cultivated society, but as Rothman argues, the men who perpetrated the slave trade were respected members of prominent social and business communities and understood themselves as patriotic Americans. By tracing the lives and careers of the nation's most notorious slave traders, The Ledger and the Chain shows how their business skills and remorseless violence together made the malevolent entrepreneurialism of the slave trade. And it reveals how this horrific, ubiquitous trade in human beings shaped a growing nation and corrupted it in ways still powerfully felt today. |
Subjects & Genres | |
By Topic | Slave trade--History--19th century--United States |
Slavery--Economic aspects--United States | |
Slaves--Social conditions--19th century--United States | |
Slave traders--History--19th century--Virginia--Alexandria | |
Slave traders--History--19th century--Mississippi--Natchez | |
By Name | Ballard, Rice C.(Rice Carter),-1860 |
Franklin and Armfield (Firm)--History | |
Armfield, John,1797-1871 | |
Franklin, Isaac,1789-1846 |