The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

by Edward E. Baptist

In the surviving photo from March 4, 1865, the triumphant and solemn day of Lincoln’s second inauguration, you can see among the massive crowd of people covering the Capitol portico a mustached figure leaning against a pillar. For John Wilkes Booth was present for Lincoln’s astonishing second inaugural address. This was, perhaps, the greatest speech ever given in the English language. It was itself a history of the half untold. It named slavery and the incessant pressure for its expansion as the reason why oceans of blood had drowned the battlefields of the Civil War. When he turned over the last page of his so-brief text, Lincoln had only forty days to live.