Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market by Walter Johnson (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2001) attempts to offer an alternative perspective to the history of slavery in the South. Rather than focusing on plantation life or historical accounts of the region, Johnson offers a meticulous study of the legalities of slavery and gives special attention to the marketplace of slavery. Johnson underlines the normalcy of slavery in the eyes of white Southerners and traders. To traders, the slaves were largely commodities or cargo; to the slaveholders they were potential ways to enrich their plantations or make domestic life easier. "My object is to get the most I can from the property...I care but little to whom or how they are sold, whether together or separated," said one owner, regarding breaking up families for the slave trade (Johnson 39).

Walter Johnson is a professor of history and African-American...
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