This book offers a richly illustrated, vividly written history that illuminates the human side of this inhumane institution, presenting it largely through stories of the slaves themselves, from the first Africans brought to British colonies in the early seventeenth century to the end of Reconstruction....

Introduction; The African roots of colonial America; Slavery: from the revolution to the cotton kingdom; Westward expansion, antislavery, and resistance; Troublesome property: the many forms of slave resistance; A hard-won freedom: from Civil War contraband to emancipation; Creating freedom during and after the war; Notes; Chronology; Further reading and web sites; Index.