-
The Ledger and the Chain
- How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America
- Narrated by: Leon Nixon
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $24.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
An award-winning historian reveals the harrowing forgotten story of America's internal slave trade - and its role in the making of America.
Slave traders are peripheral figures in most histories of American slavery. But these men - who trafficked and sold over half a million enslaved people from the Upper South to the Deep South - were essential to slavery's expansion and fueled the growth and prosperity of the United States.
In The Ledger and the Chain, acclaimed historian Joshua D. Rothman recounts the shocking story of the domestic slave trade by tracing the lives and careers of Isaac Franklin, John Armfield, and Rice Ballard, who built the largest and most powerful slave-trading operation in American history. Far from social outcasts, they were rich and widely respected businessmen, and their company sat at the center of capital flows connecting southern fields to northeastern banks. Bringing together entrepreneurial ambition and remorseless violence toward enslaved people, domestic slave traders produced an atrocity that forever transformed the nation.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Wrath to Come
- Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells
- By: Sarah Churchwell
- Narrated by: Sarah Churchwell
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sarah Churchwell examines one of the most enduringly popular stories of all time, Gone with the Wind, to help explain the divisions ripping the United States apart today. Separating fact from fiction, she shows how histories of mythmaking have informed America's racial and gender politics, the controversies over Confederate statues, the resurgence of white nationalism, the Black Lives Matter movement, the enduring power of the American Dream, and the violence of Trumpism.
-
-
understanding the myth
- By Deb O Rah on 05-13-23
By: Sarah Churchwell
-
Black AF History
- The Un-Whitewashed Story of America
- By: Michael Harriot
- Narrated by: Michael Harriot
- Length: 15 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America’s backstory is a whitewashed mythology implanted in our collective memory. It should come as no surprise that the dominant narrative of American history is blighted with errors and oversights—after all, history books were written by white men with their perspectives at the forefront. It could even be said that the devaluation and erasure of the Black experience is as American as apple pie. In Black AF History, Michael Harriot presents a more accurate version of American history.
-
-
LOVE It!
- By KMB on 09-29-23
By: Michael Harriot
-
Prequel
- An American Fight Against Fascism
- By: Rachel Maddow
- Narrated by: Rachel Maddow
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it.
-
-
The fight to keep democracy alive
- By Rex on 10-19-23
By: Rachel Maddow
-
The Half Has Never Been Told
- Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
- By: Edward E Baptist
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 19 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution - the nation's original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America's later success. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy. As historian Edward E. Baptist reveals in The Half Has Never Been Told, the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States.
-
-
A must read for everyone.
- By S. P. Cooper on 03-18-22
By: Edward E Baptist
-
Sleeping with the Ancestors
- How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery
- By: Joseph McGill Jr., Herb Frazier
- Narrated by: Joseph McGill Jr., Herb Frazier
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since founding the Slave Dwelling Project project in 2010, historic preservationist Joseph McGill Jr. has been touring the country, spending the night in former slave dwellings—throughout the South, but also the North and the West, where people are often surprised to learn that such structures exist. Sleeping with the Ancestors focuses on all of the key sites McGill has visited in his ongoing project and digs deeper into the actual history of each location, using McGill’s own experience and conversations with the community to enhance those original stories.
-
-
Giving Honor Where Honor is Due
- By Denise Johnson on 06-06-24
By: Joseph McGill Jr., and others
-
The Iliad & The Odyssey
- By: Homer
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 28 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Little is known about the Ancient Greek oral poet Homer, the supposed 8th century BC author of the world-read Iliad and his later masterpiece, The Odyssey. These classic epics provided the basis for Greek education and culture throughout the classical age and formed the backbone of humane education through the birth of the Roman Empire and the spread of Christianity.
-
-
Worth the price, worth the time
- By Sam on 12-31-04
By: Homer
-
The Wrath to Come
- Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells
- By: Sarah Churchwell
- Narrated by: Sarah Churchwell
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sarah Churchwell examines one of the most enduringly popular stories of all time, Gone with the Wind, to help explain the divisions ripping the United States apart today. Separating fact from fiction, she shows how histories of mythmaking have informed America's racial and gender politics, the controversies over Confederate statues, the resurgence of white nationalism, the Black Lives Matter movement, the enduring power of the American Dream, and the violence of Trumpism.
-
-
understanding the myth
- By Deb O Rah on 05-13-23
By: Sarah Churchwell
-
Black AF History
- The Un-Whitewashed Story of America
- By: Michael Harriot
- Narrated by: Michael Harriot
- Length: 15 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America’s backstory is a whitewashed mythology implanted in our collective memory. It should come as no surprise that the dominant narrative of American history is blighted with errors and oversights—after all, history books were written by white men with their perspectives at the forefront. It could even be said that the devaluation and erasure of the Black experience is as American as apple pie. In Black AF History, Michael Harriot presents a more accurate version of American history.
-
-
LOVE It!
- By KMB on 09-29-23
By: Michael Harriot
-
Prequel
- An American Fight Against Fascism
- By: Rachel Maddow
- Narrated by: Rachel Maddow
- Length: 13 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inspired by her research for the hit podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it.
-
-
The fight to keep democracy alive
- By Rex on 10-19-23
By: Rachel Maddow
-
The Half Has Never Been Told
- Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
- By: Edward E Baptist
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 19 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution - the nation's original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America's later success. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy. As historian Edward E. Baptist reveals in The Half Has Never Been Told, the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States.
-
-
A must read for everyone.
- By S. P. Cooper on 03-18-22
By: Edward E Baptist
-
Sleeping with the Ancestors
- How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery
- By: Joseph McGill Jr., Herb Frazier
- Narrated by: Joseph McGill Jr., Herb Frazier
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since founding the Slave Dwelling Project project in 2010, historic preservationist Joseph McGill Jr. has been touring the country, spending the night in former slave dwellings—throughout the South, but also the North and the West, where people are often surprised to learn that such structures exist. Sleeping with the Ancestors focuses on all of the key sites McGill has visited in his ongoing project and digs deeper into the actual history of each location, using McGill’s own experience and conversations with the community to enhance those original stories.
-
-
Giving Honor Where Honor is Due
- By Denise Johnson on 06-06-24
By: Joseph McGill Jr., and others
-
The Iliad & The Odyssey
- By: Homer
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 28 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Little is known about the Ancient Greek oral poet Homer, the supposed 8th century BC author of the world-read Iliad and his later masterpiece, The Odyssey. These classic epics provided the basis for Greek education and culture throughout the classical age and formed the backbone of humane education through the birth of the Roman Empire and the spread of Christianity.
-
-
Worth the price, worth the time
- By Sam on 12-31-04
By: Homer
-
How the Word Is Passed
- A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
- By: Clint Smith
- Narrated by: Clint Smith
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the listener on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks—those that are honest about the past and those that are not—that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history, and ourselves.
-
-
Sincerely grateful read
- By Kelvin Dixon on 06-08-21
By: Clint Smith
-
The 1619 Project
- A New Origin Story
- By: Nikole Hannah-Jones, The New York Times Magazine, Caitlin Roper - editor, and others
- Narrated by: Nikole Hannah-Jones, Full Cast
- Length: 18 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning “1619 Project” issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This new book substantially expands on that work, weaving together 18 essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with 36 poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance.
-
-
Comprehensive and Cutting
- By Thomas Ray on 12-30-21
By: Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others
-
The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy
- And the Path to a Shared American Future
- By: Robert P. Jones
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Beginning with contemporary efforts to reckon with the legacy of white supremacy in America, Jones returns to the fateful year when a little-known church doctrine emerged that shaped the way five centuries of European Christians would understand the “discovered” world and the people who populated it. From this vantage point, Jones illuminates how the enslavement of Africans was not America’s original sin but, rather, the continuation of acts of genocide and dispossession flowing from the first European contact with Native Americans.
-
-
The Doctrine of discovery matters to our history
- By Adam Shields on 09-13-23
By: Robert P. Jones
-
Before the Mayflower
- A History of Black America
- By: Lerone Bennett
- Narrated by: John Ridle
- Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The black experience in America - starting from its origins in western Africa up to 1961 - is examined in this seminal study from a prominent African American figure. The entire historical timeline of African Americans is addressed, from the Colonial period through the civil rights upheavals of the late 1950s to 1961, the time of publication.
-
-
Very informative, worth listening to thrice..
- By Alednam A Uonopk on 04-13-21
By: Lerone Bennett
-
They Were Her Property
- White Women as Slave Owners in the American South
- By: Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bridging women's history, the history of the South, and African-American history, this audiobook makes a bold argument about the role of white women in American slavery. Historian Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers draws on a variety of sources to show that slave-owning women were sophisticated economic actors who directly engaged in and benefited from the South's slave market.
-
-
Women ARE just like men
- By Mary on 08-22-19
-
Black Reconstruction in America
- By: W. E. B. Du Bois, David Levering Lewis
- Narrated by: Mirron Willis
- Length: 37 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This pioneering work was the first full-length study of the role black Americans played in the crucial period after the Civil War, when the slaves had been freed and the attempt was made to reconstruct American society. Hailed at the time, Black Reconstruction in America has justly been called a classic.
-
-
The textbook you should have had in high school.
- By Saleh on 05-06-18
By: W. E. B. Du Bois, and others
-
Reconstruction
- America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877
- By: Eric Foner
- Narrated by: Norman Dietz
- Length: 30 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The period following the Civil War was one of the most controversial eras in American history. This comprehensive account of the period captures the drama of those turbulent years that played such an important role in shaping modern America.
-
-
Outdated edition!!
- By Bruce on 11-02-17
By: Eric Foner
-
Stolen
- The Astonishing Odyssey of Five Boys Along the Reverse Underground Railroad
- By: Richard Bell
- Narrated by: Leon Nixon
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Philadelphia, 1825: Five young, free Black boys fall into the clutches of the most fearsome gang of kidnappers and slavers in the US. Lured onto a small ship with the promise of food and pay, they are instead met with blindfolds, ropes, and knives. Over four long months, their kidnappers drive them overland into the Cotton Kingdom to be sold as slaves. Determined to resist, the boys form a tight brotherhood as they struggle to free themselves and find their way home.
-
-
Should have been a fact based novel
- By Cate F. on 01-11-21
By: Richard Bell
-
Born in Blackness
- Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War
- By: Howard W. French
- Narrated by: James Fouhey
- Length: 16 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born in Blackness vitally reframes the story of medieval and emerging Africa, demonstrating how the economic ascendancy of Europe, the anchoring of democracy in the West, and the fulfillment of so-called Enlightenment ideals all grew out of Europe's dehumanizing engagement with the "dark" continent. In fact, French reveals, the first impetus for the Age of Discovery was not—as we are so often told, even today—Europe's yearning for ties with Asia, but rather its centuries-old desire to forge a trade in gold with legendarily rich Black societies in the heart of West Africa.
-
-
American History World History Our History
- By Bill on 06-13-22
By: Howard W. French
-
Summer for the Gods
- The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion
- By: Edward J. Larson
- Narrated by: Brian Troxell
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Edward Larson's classic, Summer for the Gods, received the Pulitzer Prize in History in 1998 and is the single most authoritative account of a pivotal event whose combatants remain at odds in school districts and courtrooms. For this edition Larson has added a new preface that assesses the state of the battle between creationism and evolution and points the way to how it might potentially be resolved.
-
-
A little biased toward evolution
- By Medina Family on 02-19-20
By: Edward J. Larson
-
Necessary Trouble
- Growing Up at Midcentury
- By: Drew Gilpin Faust
- Narrated by: Drew Gilpin Faust
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To grow up in the 1950s was to enter a world of polarized national alliances, nuclear threat, and destabilized social hierarchies. To be a privileged white girl in conservative, segregated Virginia was to be expected to adopt a willful blindness to the inequities of race and the constraints of gender. For young Drew Gilpin Faust, the acceptance of both female subordination and racial privilege proved intolerable and galvanizing. Urged to become “well adjusted" and to fill the role of a poised young lady that her upbringing imposed, she found resistance was the necessary price of survival.
-
-
My Life written by Her.
- By Jacqueline L Larner on 09-03-23
-
African Founders
- How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals
- By: David Hackett Fischer
- Narrated by: Lamarr Gulley
- Length: 35 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
African Founders explores the little-known history of how enslaved people from different regions of Africa interacted with colonists of European origins to create new regional cultures in the colonial United States. The Africans brought with them linguistic skills, novel techniques of animal husbandry and farming, and generations-old ethical principles, among other attributes. This startling history reveals how much our country was shaped by these African influences in its early years, producing a new distinctly American culture.
-
-
faux vocalizations
- By Porter on 08-19-22
Critic reviews
"Tremendous.... [The Ledger and the Chain] intertwines a careful biography of a very successful business with unflinching attention to the monstrosity that business was built upon.” (Slate)
"In smoothly readable prose and with an unflinching moral eye, Rothman uses the biographies of a few key players to investigate the internal slave trade of America in the years before the Civil War." (Christian Science Monitor)
“Slave traders aren’t often called out by name, and therefore are subjected to little accountability. But Rothman shines a light on how these human traffickers were responsible for crimes against humanity, the sale of over half a million enslaved people among them.” (Fortune)
Related to this topic
-
The American Slave Coast
- A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry
- By: Ned Sublette, Constance Sublette
- Narrated by: Robin Eller
- Length: 30 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The American Slave Coast tells the horrific story of how the slavery business in the United States made the reproductive labor of "breeding women" essential to the expansion of the nation. The book shows how slaves' children, and their children's children, were human savings accounts that were the basis of money and credit. This was so deeply embedded in the economy of the slave states that it could be decommissioned only by emancipation, achieved through the bloodiest war in the history of the United States.
-
-
Get "The Half Has Never Been Told" instead!
- By Ary Shalizi on 11-28-16
By: Ned Sublette, and others
-
Soul by Soul
- Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market
- By: Walter Johnson
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Soul by Soul tells the story of slavery in antebellum America by moving away from the cotton plantations and into the slave market itself, the heart of the domestic slave trade. Taking us inside the New Orleans slave market, the largest in the nation, where 100,000 men, women, and children were packaged, priced, and sold, Walter Johnson transforms the statistics of this chilling trade into the human drama of traders, buyers, and slaves, negotiating sales that would alter the life of each.
-
-
Heartbreaking
- By Cathy Bown on 07-30-21
By: Walter Johnson
-
Stolen
- The Astonishing Odyssey of Five Boys Along the Reverse Underground Railroad
- By: Richard Bell
- Narrated by: Leon Nixon
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Philadelphia, 1825: Five young, free Black boys fall into the clutches of the most fearsome gang of kidnappers and slavers in the US. Lured onto a small ship with the promise of food and pay, they are instead met with blindfolds, ropes, and knives. Over four long months, their kidnappers drive them overland into the Cotton Kingdom to be sold as slaves. Determined to resist, the boys form a tight brotherhood as they struggle to free themselves and find their way home.
-
-
Should have been a fact based novel
- By Cate F. on 01-11-21
By: Richard Bell
-
Sweet Taste of Liberty
- A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America
- By: W. Caleb McDaniel
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born into slavery, Henrietta Wood was taken to Cincinnati and legally freed in 1848. In 1853, a Kentucky deputy sheriff named Zebulon Ward colluded with Wood's employer, abducted her, and sold her back into bondage. She remained enslaved throughout the Civil War, giving birth to a son in Mississippi and never forgetting who had put her in this position. By 1869, Wood had obtained her freedom for a second time and returned to Cincinnati, where she sued Ward for damages in 1870. Astonishingly, after eight years of litigation, Wood won her case: In 1878, a Federal jury awarded her $2,500.
-
-
insightful and educational
- By Mark W. on 06-29-20
-
Dreams of Africa in Alabama
- The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America
- By: Sylviane A. Diouf
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the summer of 1860, more than 50 years after the United States legally abolished the international slave trade, 110 men, women, and children from Benin and Nigeria were brought ashore in Alabama under cover of night. They were the last recorded group of Africans deported to the United States as slaves. This book reconstructs the lives of the people in West Africa, recounts their capture and passage in the slave pen in Ouidah, and describes their experience of slavery alongside American-born enslaved men and women.
-
-
Should be required reading in all schools.
- By Anonymous User on 12-31-21
-
The Half Has Never Been Told
- Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
- By: Edward E Baptist
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 19 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution - the nation's original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America's later success. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy. As historian Edward E. Baptist reveals in The Half Has Never Been Told, the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States.
-
-
A must read for everyone.
- By S. P. Cooper on 03-18-22
By: Edward E Baptist
-
The American Slave Coast
- A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry
- By: Ned Sublette, Constance Sublette
- Narrated by: Robin Eller
- Length: 30 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The American Slave Coast tells the horrific story of how the slavery business in the United States made the reproductive labor of "breeding women" essential to the expansion of the nation. The book shows how slaves' children, and their children's children, were human savings accounts that were the basis of money and credit. This was so deeply embedded in the economy of the slave states that it could be decommissioned only by emancipation, achieved through the bloodiest war in the history of the United States.
-
-
Get "The Half Has Never Been Told" instead!
- By Ary Shalizi on 11-28-16
By: Ned Sublette, and others
-
Soul by Soul
- Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market
- By: Walter Johnson
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Soul by Soul tells the story of slavery in antebellum America by moving away from the cotton plantations and into the slave market itself, the heart of the domestic slave trade. Taking us inside the New Orleans slave market, the largest in the nation, where 100,000 men, women, and children were packaged, priced, and sold, Walter Johnson transforms the statistics of this chilling trade into the human drama of traders, buyers, and slaves, negotiating sales that would alter the life of each.
-
-
Heartbreaking
- By Cathy Bown on 07-30-21
By: Walter Johnson
-
Stolen
- The Astonishing Odyssey of Five Boys Along the Reverse Underground Railroad
- By: Richard Bell
- Narrated by: Leon Nixon
- Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Philadelphia, 1825: Five young, free Black boys fall into the clutches of the most fearsome gang of kidnappers and slavers in the US. Lured onto a small ship with the promise of food and pay, they are instead met with blindfolds, ropes, and knives. Over four long months, their kidnappers drive them overland into the Cotton Kingdom to be sold as slaves. Determined to resist, the boys form a tight brotherhood as they struggle to free themselves and find their way home.
-
-
Should have been a fact based novel
- By Cate F. on 01-11-21
By: Richard Bell
-
Sweet Taste of Liberty
- A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America
- By: W. Caleb McDaniel
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born into slavery, Henrietta Wood was taken to Cincinnati and legally freed in 1848. In 1853, a Kentucky deputy sheriff named Zebulon Ward colluded with Wood's employer, abducted her, and sold her back into bondage. She remained enslaved throughout the Civil War, giving birth to a son in Mississippi and never forgetting who had put her in this position. By 1869, Wood had obtained her freedom for a second time and returned to Cincinnati, where she sued Ward for damages in 1870. Astonishingly, after eight years of litigation, Wood won her case: In 1878, a Federal jury awarded her $2,500.
-
-
insightful and educational
- By Mark W. on 06-29-20
-
Dreams of Africa in Alabama
- The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America
- By: Sylviane A. Diouf
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the summer of 1860, more than 50 years after the United States legally abolished the international slave trade, 110 men, women, and children from Benin and Nigeria were brought ashore in Alabama under cover of night. They were the last recorded group of Africans deported to the United States as slaves. This book reconstructs the lives of the people in West Africa, recounts their capture and passage in the slave pen in Ouidah, and describes their experience of slavery alongside American-born enslaved men and women.
-
-
Should be required reading in all schools.
- By Anonymous User on 12-31-21
-
The Half Has Never Been Told
- Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
- By: Edward E Baptist
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 19 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution - the nation's original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America's later success. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy. As historian Edward E. Baptist reveals in The Half Has Never Been Told, the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States.
-
-
A must read for everyone.
- By S. P. Cooper on 03-18-22
By: Edward E Baptist
-
Cornelius Vanderbilt - The Commodore: Insight and Analysis Into the Life and Success of America's First Tycoon
- Business Biographies and Memoirs - Titans of Industry
- By: J.R. MacGregor
- Narrated by: Kevin Kollins
- Length: 3 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cornelius Vanderbilt I had no illusions about his life. He didn’t start out with grand plans and ungodly greed. He merely stepped in this world one foot at a time, one boat at a time, one market at a time - one day at a time. He worked 16 hours a day, seven days a week. He worked hard and played hard. When all was said and done, though, he was a simple man who pushed the world of transportation to be all it could be - to be what it is today. Vanderbilt was a man of steel, and we can learn incredible things from him.
-
-
Bravo
- By Arthur Starnes on 09-18-19
By: J.R. MacGregor
-
Gotham
- A History of New York City to 1898
- By: Edwin G. Burrows, Mike Wallace
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 67 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Gotham, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace have produced a monumental work of history, one that ranges from the Indian tribes that settled in and around the island of Manna-hata, to the consolidation of the five boroughs into Greater New York in 1898. It is an epic narrative, a story as vast and as varied as the city it chronicles, and it underscores that the history of New York is the story of our nation. The events and people who crowd this audiobook guarantee that this is no mere local history. It is in fact a portrait of the heart and soul of America....
-
-
THANK YOU!!!!!
- By Stephen F (SPFJR) on 09-29-18
By: Edwin G. Burrows, and others
-
The Devil's Half Acre
- The Untold Story of How One Woman Liberated the South's Most Notorious Slave Jail
- By: Kristen Green
- Narrated by: Deanna Anthony
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
New York Times best-selling author Kristen Green draws on years of research to tell the extraordinary and little-known story of young Mary Lumpkin, an enslaved woman who blazed a path of liberation for thousands. She was forced to have the children of a brutal slave trader and live on the premises of his slave jail, known as the “Devil’s Half Acre”. When she inherited the jail after the death of her slaveholder, she transformed it into “God’s Half Acre”, a school where Black men could fulfill their dreams.
-
-
Preachy
- By Elizabeth Combs on 09-13-22
By: Kristen Green
-
"Our Crowd"
- The Great Jewish Families of New York
- By: Stephen Birmingham
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 19 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
They immigrated to America from Germany in the nineteenth century with names like Loeb, Sachs, Seligman, Lehman, Guggenheim, and Goldman. From tenements on the Lower East Side to Park Avenue mansions, this handful of Jewish families turned small businesses into imposing enterprises and amassed spectacular fortunes. But despite possessing breathtaking wealth that rivaled the Astors and Rockefellers, they were barred by the gentile establishment from the lofty realm of "the 400," a register of New York's most elite, because of their religion and humble backgrounds.
-
-
Finance heavy
- By Shayla on 03-28-21
-
Dawn of Detroit
- A Chronicle of Bondage and Freedom in the City of the Straits
- By: Tiya Miles
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Most Americans believe that slavery was a creature of the South, and that Northern states and territories provided stops on the Underground Railroad for fugitive slaves on their way to Canada. In this paradigm-shifting book, celebrated historian Tiya Miles reveals that slavery was at the heart of the Midwest's iconic city: Detroit. In this richly researched and eye-opening book, Miles has pieced together the experience of the unfree - both native and African American - in the frontier outpost of Detroit.
-
-
Great!
- By Melissa Eisner on 05-30-18
By: Tiya Miles
-
Unworthy Republic
- The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory
- By: Claudio Saunt
- Narrated by: Stephen Bowlby
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In May 1830, the United States formally launched a policy to expel Native Americans from the East to territories west of the Mississippi River. Justified as a humanitarian enterprise, the undertaking was to be systematic and rational, overseen by Washington's small but growing bureaucracy. But as the policy unfolded over the next decade, thousands of Native Americans died under the federal government's auspices, and thousands of others lost their possessions and homelands in an orgy of fraud, intimidation, and violence.
-
-
A Slow Burn
- By Hervé DuThé on 04-20-20
By: Claudio Saunt
-
Three Roads to the Alamo
- The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis
- By: William C. Davis
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 27 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Three Roads to the Alamo is the definitive work about the lives of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis - the legendary frontiersmen and fighters who met their destiny at the Alamo in one of the most famous and tragic battles in American history - and about what really happened in that battle.
-
-
Grandfather Dr. Death eats Applesauce on Christmas
- By McKinley L. Donnor on 07-15-20
By: William C. Davis
-
Revolver
- Sam Colt and the Six-Shooter That Changed America
- By: Jim Rasenberger
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 16 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Brilliantly told, Revolver brings the brazenly ambitious and profoundly innovative industrialist and leader Samuel Colt to vivid life. In the space of his 47 years, he seemingly lived five lives: He traveled, womanized, drank prodigiously, smuggled guns to Russia, bribed politicians, and supplied the Union Army with the guns they needed to win the Civil War. Colt lived during an age of promise and progress, but also of slavery, corruption, and unbridled greed, and he not only helped to create this America, he completely embodied it.
-
-
Sam Colt, but not the Revolver
- By Eggleston on 08-01-20
By: Jim Rasenberger
-
The Grandees
- America's Sephardic Elite
- By: Stephen Birmingham
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 13 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1654, 23 Jewish families arrived in New Amsterdam (now New York) aboard a French privateer. They were the Sephardim, members of a proud orthodox sect that had served as royal advisors and honored professionals under Moorish rule in Spain and Portugal but were then exiled by intolerant monarchs. A small, closed, and intensely private community, the Sephardim soon established themselves as businessmen and financiers. They became powerful forces in society, with some, like banker Haym Salomon, even providing financial support to George Washington's army during the American Revolution.
-
-
Amazing American History - Jews Made a Profound Impact
- By Jimmy Rosen on 12-27-21
-
The Strange Career of William Ellis
- The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire
- By: Karl Jacoby
- Narrated by: JD Jackson
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To his contemporaries in Gilded Age Manhattan, Guillermo Eliseo was a fantastically wealthy Mexican, the proud owner of a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park, a busy Wall Street office, and scores of mines and haciendas in Mexico. But for all his obvious riches and his elegant appearance, Eliseo was also the possessor of a devastating secret: He was not, in fact, from Mexico at all. Rather, he had begun life as a slave named William Ellis, born on a cotton plantation in Texas during the waning years of King Cotton.
-
-
Fascinating Tale of Racial Passing
- By Steven Schuster on 06-10-16
By: Karl Jacoby
-
Empire of Mud
- The Secret History of Washington, DC
- By: J. D. Dickey
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Washington, DC, gleams with stately columns and neoclassical temples, a pulsing hub of political power and prowess. But for decades it was one of the worst excuses for a capital city the world had ever seen. Empire of Mud unearths and untangles the roots of our capital’s story and explores how the city was tainted from the outset, nearly stifled from becoming the proud citadel of the republic that George Washington and Pierre L’Enfant envisioned more than two centuries ago.
-
-
Not what I thought
- By William Elliott on 09-30-20
By: J. D. Dickey
-
Bound for Canaan
- The Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, America's First Civil Rights Movement
- By: Fergus Bordewich
- Narrated by: Peter J. Fernandez
- Length: 19 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Civil War brought to a climax the country's bitter division. But the beginnings of slavery's denouement can be traced to a courageous band of ordinary Americans, black and white, slave and free, who joined forces to create what would come to be known as the Underground Railroad, a movement that occupies as romantic a place in the nation's imagination as the Lewis and Clark expedition.
-
-
The Heroic Missing Piece
- By Paul Frandano on 03-03-17
By: Fergus Bordewich
What listeners say about The Ledger and the Chain
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- BookwormHLH
- 08-15-22
This is a Historical Study! And a Great Read
Some other reviewers seem to not understand that this is a historical study, so facts and research make up much of the content. That said, Rothman does an amazing job of stringing together disturbing, fascinating, and heart-rending stories about slave trafficking, as well as illustrating the elaborate and complex capitalist machine that drove the trade. Highly recommend!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Dominique
- 05-11-24
Powerful, eye opening story
The book is primarily the history of the slave trading firm Franklin & Armfield, one of the nation’s most notable and largest domestic slave traders. An excellent read, the author chronicles the evolution of the domestic trade through the lens of the company’s records and its impact on southern society.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 03-17-24
Reader whispers!!
The person narrating this audio book whispers at the end of his sentences making it hard to understand and follow.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Nicholas Moore
- 04-14-23
Sermonic Tones
The sermonic tones throughout the book exposes the author’s inherent biases which detracts from its scholarly acumen. The epilogue is lacking an overall summary of salient points of the historiography regarding the American slave trade in the nineteenth century. Finally, the author uses today’s morals to judge men of the nineteenth century which wreaks of presentism.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jack
- 08-03-21
Hyper editorialized
The historical chronicle is damaging enough to the reputation of the domestic slave traders. This otherwise well researched and interesting book is held back by too many editorial comments, assumptions of will or emotion, and unconcealed political appeals made to a subset of modern readers.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- drew
- 07-25-21
Unfortunately really boring
It literally is a ledger on people’s names that participated. I love history but it’s gotta be more interesting.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
1 person found this helpful