The transatlantic slave trade dominated in North America during the 17th and 18th centuries. But by 1808, a different slave trade came to dominate in the young United States, the domestic or internal slave trade.
Joshua D. Rothman, an award-winning historian, Professor of History at the University of Alabama, and author of the book, The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America, leads us on an exploration of the United States’ domestic slave trade and the lives of three slave traders who helped to define this trade.
About the Show
Ben Franklin’s World is a podcast about early American history.
It is a show for people who love history and for those who want to know more about the historical people and events that have impacted and shaped our present-day world.
Ben Franklin’s World is a production of the Omohundro Institute.
Episode Summary
Joshua D. Rothman, an award-winning historian and author of the book , joins us to investigate the United States’ domestic or internal slave trade.
During our investigation, Josh reveals the long history of North America’s domestic or internal slave trade; How and why the United States Congress passed a ban on the international or transatlantic slave trade in 1808; And, how the 1808-ban on the international slave trade allowed the domestic slave trade to grow, develop, and emerge as a profitable business in the nineteenth century.
What You’ll Discover
- Overview of the domestic slave trade
- Enslaved people as assets to be traded
- Colonial period domestic slave trade
- Congressional ban on the international slave trade in 1808
- Isaac Franklin, John Armfield, Rice Ballard–Domestic Slave Traders
- Business of the domestic slave trade
- Success of Franklin & Armfield firm
- Places of the domestic slave trade
- Domestic slave trade in Washington, D.C.
- Experiences of the enslaved in the domestic slave trade
- Slave traders’ ideas and remorse about their business
- Women and the domestic slave trade
- End of the domestic slave trade in the United States
- Legacy of the domestic slave trade in U.S. society
Links to People, Places, and Publications
- Joshua Rothman
- Josh Rothman on Twitter
- The Ledger and the Chain
- Freedom on the Move: A Database of Fugitives from North American Slavery
- Stephanie Jones-Rogers, They Were Her Property: White Women as Slaveholders in the American South
- Richard Bell, Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped Into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home
- Caitlin Rosenthal, Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management
- John Harris, The Last Slave Ships: New York and the End of the Middle Passage
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Complementary Episodes
- Episode 063: Megan Kate Nelson, Ruin Nation: Destruction and the Civil War
- Episode 118: Christy Clark-Pujara, The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island
- Episode 135: Julie Holcomb, The Transatlantic Boycott of Slave Labor
- Episode 142: Manisha Sinha, A History of Abolition
- Episode 176: Daina Ramey Berry, The Value of the Enslaved from Womb to Grave
- Episode 281: Caitlin Rosenthal, The Business of Slavery
Time Warp Question
In your opinion, what might have happened if Congress had not banned the importation of enslaved Africans in 1808? How might the trajectory of the 19th-century domestic slave trade have been different?
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