Person

Robert K. D. Colby

Bylines

After Confederate Forces Took Their Children, These Black Mothers Fought to Reunite Their Families

Confederates kidnapped free Black people to sell into slavery. After the war, two women sought help from high places to track down their lost loved ones.

by Robert K. D. Colby via Smithsonian Magazine on February 6, 2025
"The Most Potent Money Power": Slave Traders, Dark Money, and Elections

In the midst of the secession crisis, Unionists accused slave traders of waging an assault on democracy.

by Robert K. D. Colby via Muster on October 19, 2018

An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South

Robert K. D. Colby

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'A slave auction at the South' by Theodore R. Davis, from Harper’s Weekly, July 1861

Speculation in Human Property

The survival of slave trading during the Civil War suggests that enslaved people remained valuable commodities in a time of economic upheaval.

by James Oakes via New York Review of Books on October 30, 2025

An Unholy Traffic: How the Slave Trade Continued Through the US Civil War

In a new book, Robert KD Colby of the University of Mississippi shows how the Confederacy remained committed to slavery.

by Rich Tenorio via The Guardian on April 28, 2024

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