The black market : the slave's value in national culture after 1865 /
Aaron Carico.
- Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, (c)2020.
- 1 online resource
- Studies in United States culture .
Includes bibliographies and index.
Cover -- Contents -- Introduction: The Unabolished -- Chapter One. Freedom as Accumulation -- Chapter Two. The Spectacle of Free Black Personhood -- Chapter Three. Cowboys and Slaves -- Chapter Four. Southern Enclosure as American Literature -- Conclusion: In the Trap -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W
"By 1860, the value of the slave population in the United States exceeded 3 billion--triple that of investments nationwide in factories, railroads, and banks combined, and worth more even than the South's lucrative farmland. The slave was not only a commodity to be traded but also a kind of currency and the basis for a range of credit relations. But the value associated with slavery was not destroyed in the Civil War. In Black Market, Aaron Carico reveals how the slave commodity survived emancipation, arguing that the enslaved person--understood here in legal, economic, social, and embodied contexts--still operated as an indispensable form of value in national culture. Carico explains how a radically incomplete--and fundamentally failed--abolition enabled the emergence of a modern nation-state, in which slavery still determined--and now goes on to determine--economic, political, and cultural life"--
9781469655604 9781469655598
Freed persons--Social conditions.--United States Freed persons--Economic conditions.--United States Slavery--Economic aspects--United States. Black market--United States.