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

by Edward E. Baptist

Before we pass through the door that Lorenzo Ivy opened, here are the chapters’ names. The first is “Feet,” for the story begins with unfree movement on paths to enslaved frontiers that were laid down between the end of the American Revolution in 1783 and the early 1800s. “Heads” is the title of the second chapter, which covers America’s acquisition of the key points of the Mississippi Valley by violence, a gain that also consolidated the enslavers’ hold on the frontier. Then come the “Right Hand” and the “Left Hand” (Chapters 3 and 4). They reveal the inner secrets of enslavers’ power, secrets which made the entire world of white people wealthy. “Tongues” (Chapter 5) and “Breath” (Chapter 6) follow. They describe how, by the mid-1820s, enslavers had not only found ways to silence the tongues of their critics, but had built a system of slave trading that served as expansion’s lungs.