Customer Reviews

Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life

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I read Steven Deyle's book, Carry Me Back, on the recommendation of a review by Benjamin Schwarz in the June 2005 edition of the Atlantic Monthly. Schwarz praised Carry Me Back as "a fine book - by far the best work to date on the subject." Schwarz also pointed out that Deyle "takes a broad view" of the domestic slave trade and "he approaches the subject with nuance." I found the book persuasively argued and a pleasure to read. Although my doctorate is in political science, I am a history teacher and I strongly recommend Carry Me Back to any student of US history.

I picked up Carry Me Back based just on the subject and I expected a kind of standard treatment of slave trading as a business: so many people were sold to such and such states etc. This book does contain some of that but it has much more. Carry Me Back has an important argument about the nature of American slavery and sectionalism within the South. The book puts the slave trade at the center of American slavery showing how the money generated by the trade both reinforced slavery and led to doubts about its future. Deyle also shows how the increasing commodification of slaves altered the very way in which slavery was perceived by slaveowners and non-slaveowners. This is a must have for anyone who wants to understand American slavery.