The American History Timeline

01/15/2025

BOOK REVIEW: Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South by Robert K.D. Colby (Oxford University Press • Hardcover • 2024)

Spade by spade, enslaved people from surrounding plantations worked to build the earthen fortification at the mouth of New Inlet in North Carolina that became the mightiest fort in the Confederacy by 1865. Drafts of bondsmen from surrounding plantations helped meet the labor demands required to erect the eleven forts and batteries guarding Wilmington, the most important port in the rebelling South. There was value in their work, but their value went beyond the sweat of their brows.
Antebellum slavery has been examined extensively, but once the bombardment of Fort Sumter punctuated the end to the pre-war era, there are few examinations of how the institution of slavery continued during the war years between 1861-1865. Robert K.D. Colby's new book shines a spotlight on the institution of slavery as America's great crucible occurred.
Slavery as an institution was an essential mechanism to make plantation agriculture possible. Making such vast estates profitable required a free or nearly free work force to plant, tend, and harvest the cash crops that the agricultural Southern states economies depended on. But after the end of the international slave trade in the first half of the nineteenth century, slaves became money making commodities in their own right. By the time the first mortars exploded over the federal installation at the mouth of Charleston harbor to cast the nation into civil war, many Southern slave holders made more money off the trade of enslaved chattels than they did from the agriculture the enslaved were critical to.
Colby's skill as a historian is complimented by his talent as a storyteller. Using primary sources and data to explore the heartbreaking stories of the enslaved and the institution of slavery itself in the war years, Colby paints a picture that not many historians have delved into. For those interested in the study of American slavery, An Unholy Traffic is a book that should be among the essentials on your reading list.

01/01/2025

01/01/2025

“I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper. If my name ever goes into history it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it."

On January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation declaring that “all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free…” Many black congregations kept vigil the night before in anticipation of this profound event.

While the Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in rebellious states, the words “thenceforward and forever free” captured the imagination of the enslaved and emboldened many of them to flee. Nearly one quarter of the four million enslaved in this country escaped to freedom before the Civil War’s end. The Proclamation also invited African Americans to join the United States military. They responded in droves, swelling the ranks of the army and navy by nearly 200,000 men.

11/21/2024

America will celebrate the Semiquincentennial anniversary of its independence from Great Britain in 2026. The causes of that world-changing event were many and complexly intertwined, so new conjectures unsurprisingly continue to emerge from the archival mists.

https://allthingsliberty.com/2024/11/cruel-bedlam-bankruptcies-and-the-break-with-britian/

11/15/2024

'George Washington (with bow and arrow) pictured alongside the Goddess of America' Though I'm American myself, I always learn the most about America when I look outside it.

10/26/2024

10/19/2024

"The Iroquois Confederacy, also known as the Haudenosaunee, is a Native American confederation consisting of six different tribes: the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora. The confederacy was founded sometime around the 12th century, and is believed to be the oldest surviving participatory democracy in the world.
The confederacy was created as a way for the six tribes to unite and work together towards common goals, such as defense against outside threats,…

10/18/2024

This day in history:

October 18, 1767 - The survey of the Mason-Dixon Line is completed by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon. This boundary settles colonial disputes and later symbolizes the dividing line between free and slave states.

10/13/2024

  Despite Much Alleged Corruption the 2020 Presidential Election was Not Corrupt The chaotic aftermath of the 2020 Presidential election should