Professor Blight lectures on southern slavery. He makes a case for viewing the U.S. South as one of the five true "slave societies" in world history. He discusses the internal slave trade that moved thousands of slaves from the eastern seaboard to the cotton states of the Southwest between 1820 and 1860. Professor Blight then sketches the contents of the pro-slavery argument, including its biblical, historical, economic, cynical, and utopian aspects.

Reading assignment:

Bruce Levine, Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of the Civil War, Introduction, chapters 2, 3, 5 and 6

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave