Unrequited Toil: A History of United States Slavery (Cambridge Essential Histories)

Written as a narrative history of slavery within the United States, Unrequited Toil details how an institution that seemed to be disappearing at the end of the American Revolution rose to become the most contested and valuable economic interest in the nation by 1850. Calvin Schermerhorn charts changes in the family lives of enslaved Americans, exploring the broader processes of nation-building in the United States, growth and intensification of national and international markets, the institutionalization of chattel slavery, and the growing relevance of race in the politics and society of the republic. In chapters organized chronologically, Schermerhorn argues that American economic development relied upon African Americans' social reproduction while simultaneously destroying their intergenerational cultural continuity. He explores the personal narratives of enslaved people and develops themes such as politics, economics, labor, literature, rebellion, and social conditions.

• American Slavery: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
• The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation
• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Dover Thrift Editions)
• American Protest Literature (The John Harvard Library)
• Letters from a Slave Girl: The Story of Harriet Jacobs
• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
• An Uncommon Soldier: The Civil War Letters of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, alias Pvt. Lyons Wakeman, 153rd Regiment, New York State Volunteers, 1862-1864
• African American Faces of the Civil War: An Album
• The Soldier's Pen: Firsthand Impressions of the Civil War
• They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South