Johnson situates his reader in 19th century New Orleans, home to North America’s largest slave market. Up to 100 people were crushed into slave pens. Slaves were sourced from Europe and America’s colonial empire. Over the course of four centuries, 10 or 11 million people were shipped to the new world in “one of the largest forced migrations in world history” (8). Importation of African slaves was banned in America in 1808. The price of slaves tracked the price of cotton throughout the 1830s and 1840s, a major segment of the economy of the South. More than 2 million slaves were sold during the Antebellum period (7). The book traces the history of slavery through the biographies of slaves, slaveholders, abolitionists, and original documents: “This is the story of the making of the antebellum South” (18).

J. W. C. Pennington, an escapee from slavery, referred to the financial value of a slave as “the chattel principle.” In their biographies, slaves such as John Brown and Elizabeth Keckley both recall discussions of their value (20). Slaveholders threatened slaves with the sale of their families, inducing a state of perpetual dread: A quarter of all sales separated husband and wife, and 50 percent destroyed a nuclear family.