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

Product Description

A stunning behind the curtain look into the last years of the illegal transatlantic slave trade in the United States

Long after the transatlantic slave trade was officially outlawed in the early nineteenth century by every major slave trading nation, merchants based in the United States were still sending hundreds of illegal slave ships from American ports to the African coast. The key instigators were slave traders who moved to New York City after the shuttering of the massive illegal slave trade to Brazil in 1850. These traffickers were determined to make lower Manhattan a key hub in the illegal slave trade to Cuba. In conjunction with allies in Africa and Cuba, they ensnared around 200,000 African men, women, and children during the 1850s and 1860s. John Harris explores how the U.S. government went from ignoring, and even abetting, this illegal trade to helping to shut it down completely in 1867.

Review

Winner, Book of the Year 2020,
New York Victorian Society

“A remarkable piece of scholarship, sophisticated yet crisply written, and deserves the widest possible audience.”

— Eric Herschthal, The New Republic

”
What makes his book so valuable is [Harris’s] ability to use this last dark era of the slave trade as a window onto a much wider world of international diplomacy, imperial arrogance, criminal conspiracy, financial shenanigans, and political conflict. . . This is a small book about big things. . . Harris is that rare historian who revels in complexity and contradiction and yet manages to also write a clear and gripping narrative.”

— James Oakes, New York Review of Books

“Smoothly written, well-researched … illuminates an often forgotten yet crucially important chapter in US history … Timely.”

— Gerald Horne, The Nation

“Brilliant”

— Calvin Schermerhorn, Journal of American History

“Uncovers an important–and littleknown–aspect of both New York City history and the history of theillegal slave trade to Cuba.”

— Erin Becker, Global Maritime History

“[An] engrossing discussion of the closing days of the Atlantic Slave trade.”

–Bob Cary, Metropole, Blog of the Urban History Association

“Fascinating … The Last Slave Ships is a model for scholars who wish to place the U.S. Civil War within a broader international context.”

–Jonathan White, The Civil War Monitor

“Engrossing … astonishingly well-documented … highly recommended for U.S. Middle Period, African American, and Civil War historians, and all general readers.
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— Library Journal (starred review)

“Harris … construct[s] a convincing and original argument in clear and concise prose … . [His] fine book synthesizes the latest scholarship on the transatlantic slave trade and adds critical insight into how global capital markets, geopolitics, transnational criminal syndicates, and international espionage rings operated and exerted influence on U.S. events throughout the Civil War period.”

— David T. Dixon,  Emerging Civil War

“Harris does an excellent job of explaining how the Cuban sugar industry operated, acquired enslaved Africans through connections on the West African coast, financed expansion through American businesses, especially New York banks, and marketed its products… [His book is] an important contribution to both local history and to our understanding of United States complicity with slavery and the trans-Atlantic slave trade.”

— Alan J. Singer,  New York Almanack

“Harris uncovers the untold story of Lower Manhattan as one of the last hubs of the transatlantic slave trade in the age of steamships, telegrams and daily newspapers. Set against a background of secessionist politics, British spies, and international diplomacy, the author elegantly tracks the last sixteen years of the traffic and offers a new interpreta