American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment, and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime

Originally published in 1918, Ulrich Bonnell Phillips’s American Negro Slavery was widely hailed upon publication as the most comprehensive and accurate examination of enslaved Africans in the South by an academic historian. In the 1950s, however, a new generation of historians—led by Kenneth Stampp—challenged many of Phillips’s inaccurate and racist views about slavery. While many historians today acknowledge that American Negro Slavery is a pioneering work, most agree that Phillips’s misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and overt racism profoundly diminish his conclusions.
This 1966 edition includes a foreword by Eugene D. Genovese, author of numerous academic works on slavery, including the Bancroft Prize-winning Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (1974).