Joshua D. Rothman

Joshua D. Rothman is a professor and chair for the department of history at the University of Alabama. He is the author of The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America.

Illustration of the enslaved laborers moving cotton in New Orleans

Before the Civil War, New Orleans Was the Center of the U.S. Slave Trade

Untroubled by their actions, human traffickers like Isaac Franklin built a lucrative business providing enslaved labor for Southern farmers

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