Slavery in the U.S.: Three Histories

Blain Roberts’s and Ethan J. Kytle’s Denmark Vesey’s Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy is a deeply researched book that uncovers competing histories of how slavery is remembered in Charleston, South Carolina—the heart of Dixie. Tera W. Hunter’s Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century is the first comprehensive history of African American marriage in the nineteenth century.  Jim Jordan’s The Slave-Trader’s Letter-Book: Charles Lamar, the Wanderer, and Other Tales of the African Slave Trade examines seventy long-lost letters that shed light on the lead-up to the Civil War from the remarkable perspective of a troubled, and troubling, figure.