Slave Trading in the Old South

Slave Trading in the Old South. By Frederic Bancroft. Introduction by Michael Tadman. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996. xxxviii, 415 pp. $18.95 (paper). ISBN 1-57003-103-7. Bancroft's classic 1931 study began a reevaluation of the benign portrait of slavery and life in the Old South developed by Ulrich Philips and his students. Bancroft drew on a wide variety of rarely used sources, including personal interviews he began conducting in the 1880s, to paint a harsh picture of the brutality of slavery and the pervasive domestic slave trade. Michael Tadman's introduction ably places Bancroft's book in a broad historiographic context and establishes its continuing significance. Tadman also provides an insightful, brief biography of Bancroft that explains Bancroft's interest in southern history, how he was drawn to the slavery question, and why he waited so long to publish this book (the origins of the study date back to his dissertation research in the 1880s). Tadman, in discussing the reviews that greeted the book's publication, gives a sense of the development of the literature on slavery and highlights the book's dramatic initial impact. A careful reading of Bancroft's work and Tadman's introduction will benefit anyone interested in American slavery.

The book is part of the Southern Classics series edited by John G. Sproat and sponsored by the Institute for Southern Studies and the South Caroliniana Society of the University of South Carolina. All involved are to be commended for bringing this classic back into print with an introduction that skillfully highlights its importance. -WILLIAM H. MUI.IcAN, JR., Murray State University

Copyright University of Alabama Press Jul 1998
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