OAH Distinguished Lecturer Profile
Joshua Rothman chairs the history department at the University of Alabama, where he is also a professor of history specializing in nineteenth-century America and the history of race and slavery. He is the author of Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787–1861 (2003); Reforming America, 1815–1860 (2009); and Flush Times and Fever Dreams: A Story of Capitalism and Slavery in the Age of Jackson (2012), which won the Gulf South Historical Association's Michael Thomason Book Award and the Southern Historical Association's Frank L. and Harriet C. Owsley Prize. His latest book is titled The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America.
In the 1820s and 1830s, the domestic slave trading company known as Franklin and Armfield was the most significant operation of its type in the country, and over time proved to be the most significant slave trading company in American history. This lecture discusses the lives and careers of the three main partners in the company, explains how and why their business became so successful, and discusses both their contributions to the developing economy of the United States and the unfathomable damage they wrought on the lives of the enslaved people they trafficked.
