The Weeping Time: Memory and the Largest Slave Auction in American History

In 1859, at the largest recorded slave auction in American history, over 400 men, women, and children were sold by the Butler Plantation estates. This book is one of the first to analyze the operation of this auction and trace the lives of slaves before, during, and after their sale. Immersing herself in the personal papers of the Butlers, accounts from journalists that witnessed the auction, genealogical records, and oral histories, Anne C. Bailey weaves together a narrative that brings the auction to life. Demonstrating the resilience of African American families, she includes interviews from the living descendants of slaves sold on the auction block, showing how the memories of slavery have shaped people's lives today. Using the auction as the focal point, The Weeping Time is a compelling and nuanced narrative of one of the most pivotal eras in American history, and how its legacy persists today.

• African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Beyond the Silence and the Shame
• Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839 (Brown Thrasher Books Ser.)
• Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation Of The Plantation Household
• They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South
• Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War's Slave Refugee Camps (Civil War America)
• Ar'n't I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South
• Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora (New Approaches to African History)
• Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home
• The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism
• Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South (Justice, Power, and Politics)