The Last Slave Ships

“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 . . . illuminating an often forgotten yet crucially important chapter in US history. . . . Timely.”—Gerald Horne, Nation

“A remarkable piece of scholarship, sophisticated yet crisply written. . . . [It] deserves the widest possible audience.”—Eric Herschthal, New Republic

“Engrossing. . . . Astonishingly well-documented. . . . A signal contribution to U.S. antebellum historiography. Highly recommended for U.S. Middle Period, African American, and Civil War historians, and for all general readers.”—Library Journal, starred review

“A riveting and deeply researched account. . . . Compelling and convincing. It will be the authoritative source on the late Atlantic slave trade, and U.S. policy toward it, for years to come.”—Gregory E. O’Malley, Journal of Southern History

“A groundbreaking contribution to the history of capitalism, international politics, and slavery.”—Marcelo Rosanova Ferraro, Business History Review

“A nuanced and impressive narrative which uncovers an important—and little known—aspect of both New York City history and the history of the illegal 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)

The Victorian Society Book of the Year for 2020

“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 interpretation of why it came to an end. This page-turner combines first rate scholarship with a clear and compelling argument.”—David Eltis, coauthor of Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade

“Brilliant and strikingly original. An important addition to the literature on the U.S. involvement in the illegal slave trade with major implications for our understanding of the larger conduct of that traffic throughout the Atlantic world.”—Randy J. Sparks, Tulane University

“With startling detail and crisp prose, Harris exposes an international ring of human traffickers based in Lower Manhattan during the final years of the transatlantic slave trade. Today, as the United States scrutinizes the roots of anti-black racism and the traumatic legacies of slavery, The Last Slave Ships reveals new dimensions of U.S. complicity in the twinned history of global capital and chattel slavery.”—Sharla Fett, author of Recaptured Africans: Surviving Slave Ships, Detention, and Dislocation in the Final Years of the Slave Trade