Image courtesy of Historic Alexandria
An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South
A compelling lecture by historian Robert Colby will take place at the Alexandria History Museum at The Lyceum on Thursday, March 6, from 7–9 p.m. Colby, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Mississippi, will discuss his groundbreaking new book, An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South (Oxford University Press, 2024).
In this lecture, Colby will explore how the buying and selling of enslaved people persisted throughout the Civil War. Between Fort Sumter and Appomattox, Confederates bought and sold thousands of men, women, and children through a persisting trade in enslaved people. They did so for a multitude of reasons, including to adapt to the conflict, to invest in their desired slaveholding future, and to fend off the onset of emancipation.
These transactions had profound impacts on the enslaved, their lives and families, and the ways in which they pursued freedom during the war. The surviving traffic in humanity thus shaped the experience of the Civil War and its aftermath for all inhabitants of the wartime South.
Colby’s research has won awards from the Society of American Historians and the Society of Civil War Historians and has been published in the Journal of the Civil War Era, Journal of the Early Republic, and Slavery & Abolition.
Tickets for the lecture are $15 per person and $12 for Historic Alexandria members. Proceeds from the event will support the Freedom House Museum.
Event Details:
Date: Thursday, March 6
Time: 7 – 9 p.m.
Location: Alexandria History Museum at The Lyceum (201 S. Washington Street)
Secure your spot today! Purchase tickets online.
For more information, visit alexandriava.gov/Historic.
