James Oakes | The New York Review of Books

Speculation in Human Property

The survival of slave trading during the Civil War suggests that enslaved people remained valuable commodities in a time of economic upheaval.

An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South

by Robert K.D. Colby

November 20, 2025 issue

Ships Going Out

In American Slavers, Sean M. Kelley surveys the relatively unknown history of Americans who traded in slaves in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

American Slavers: Merchants, Mariners, and the Transatlantic Commerce in Captives, 1644–1865

by Sean M. Kelley

September 21, 2023 issue

‘Was Emancipation Constitutional?’: An Exchange

June 23, 2022 issue

Was Emancipation Constitutional?

In The Broken Constitution, Noah Feldman argues that the Confederate states had a constitutional right to secede and that Lincoln violated the Constitution in forcing them back into the Union and freeing the slaves.

The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America

by Noah Feldman

May 12, 2022 issue

Exchange

Noah Feldman

‘Was Emancipation Constitutional?’: An Exchange

June 23, 2022 issue

Why Did the Slave Trade Survive So Long?

The history of the Atlantic slave trade after the American Revolution is a story of sustained efforts to suppress it even as demand for African slaves increased.

The Last Slave Ships: New York and the End of the Middle Passage

by John Harris

April 8, 2021 issue

When Did Reconstruction End?

March 12, 2020 issue

An Unfinished Revolution

The ideological struggle to control the story of Reconstruction began at Appomattox.

Reconstruction: America After the Civil War

a PBS documentary series produced by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow

by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution

by Eric Foner

December 5, 2019 issue

Letter

Jesse Kass

When Did Reconstruction End?

March 12, 2020 issue

The Missing Ordinance

September 26, 2019 issue

Lincoln The Hack?

August 15, 2019 issue

‘No Property in Man’: An Exchange

June 27, 2019 issue

The Great Divide

Becoming Lincoln

by William W. Freehling

The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War

by Joanne B. Freeman

A Strife of Tongues: The Compromise of 1850 and the Ideological Foundations of the American Civil War

by Stephen E. Maizlish

May 23, 2019 issue

Letter

Eric Alterman

Lincoln The Hack?

August 15, 2019 issue

Letter

Staughton Lynd

The Missing Ordinance

September 26, 2019 issue

The Power of Running Away

The Captive’s Quest for Freedom: Fugitive Slaves, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and the Politics of Slavery

by R.J.M. Blackett

December 6, 2018 issue

Our ‘Wicked War’

The Dead March: A History of the Mexican-American War

by Peter Guardino

November 23, 2017 issue

The Supreme Partisan

A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1809–1849

by Sidney Blumenthal

Wrestling with His Angel: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, 1849–1856

by Sidney Blumenthal

July 13, 2017 issue

A Different Lincoln

Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860–1861

by Harold Holzer

Lincoln and His Admirals: Abraham Lincoln, the US Navy, and the Civil War

by Craig L. Symonds

Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief

by James M. McPherson

April 9, 2009 issue

They Soared Above the Din

Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America

by Allen C. Guelzo

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

edited by Rodney O. Davis andDouglas L. Wilson

October 23, 2008 issue