Joshua D. Rothman, The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America (Basic Books, 2021) For the past seven years Dr. Joshua D. Rothman, chair of the Department of History, combed archives across the country, working to craft an illuminating narrative of Isaac Franklin, John Armfield, and Rice Ballard, three business partners who ran the largest slave-trading operation in US history. Rothman’s The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America (Basic Books, 2021) debunks the […]