RICHMOND, VIRGINIA – The Library of Virginia will present a free virtual talk by historian Robert K.D. Colby on his first book, “An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South” on Tuesday, March 25, from 12 to 1 p.m. Registration is required at lva-virginia.libcal.com/event/14089953.

Colby’s book examines how, during the Civil War, Confederates bought and sold thousands of men, women and children through a persisting trade in enslaved people. They did so for a multitude of reasons, including to adapt to the conflict, to invest in their desired slaveholding future, and to fend off the onset of emancipation. These transactions had profound impacts on the enslaved, their lives and families, and the ways in which they pursued freedom during the war. The surviving traffic in humanity thus shaped the experience of the Civil War and its aftermath for all inhabitants of the wartime South.

Robert K.D. Colby is an assistant professor of history at the University of Mississippi. His research has won awards from the Society of American Historians and the Society of Civil War Historians and has been published in the Journal of the Civil War Era, the Journal of the Early Republic, and Slavery & Abolition.
 

ABOUT THE LIBRARY OF VIRGINIA 
The Library of Virginia is the leading source of information on Virginia’s history, government and people. The Library’s collections, containing more than 130 million items, document and illustrate the lives of both famous Virginians and ordinary citizens. Our online resources draw nearly 2 million website visits per year, and our on-site records, exhibitions and events bring in thousands of visitors annually. The Library is located in downtown Richmond near Capitol Square at 800 East Broad Street, Richmond, VA 23219. Learn more at www.lva.virginia.gov.

###