The Last Slave Ships: New York and the End of the Middle Passage
John Harris
Yale University Press
Long after the transatlantic slave trade was outlawed in the early 19th century, merchants based in the US -- mainly illegal slave traders in New York City -- were still sending hundreds of illegal slave ships to the African coast. John Harris explores how the US government went from ignoring and abetting this illegal trade to helping to shut it down completely in 1867.