A wide-ranging, powerful, alternative vision of the history of the United States and how the slave-breeding industry shaped it
 
The American Slave Coast tells the horrific story of how the slavery business in the United States made the reproductive labor of “breeding women” essential to the expansion of the nation. The book shows how slaves’ children, and their children’s children, were human savings accounts that were the basis of money and credit. This was so deeply embedded in the economy of the slave states that it could only be decommissioned by Emancipation, achieved through the bloodiest war in the history of the United States. The American Slave Coast is an alternative history of the United States that presents the slavery business, as well as familiar historical figures and events, in a revealing new light.

“A massive story of impressive research…” —Kirkus Reviews

"Ned and Constance Sublette have provided the world with one of the best history books ever written about the United States. Nominally about the slave breeding industry in the US South, The American Slave Coast is actually a sweeping, in-depth survey of the nation known as the United States." —Counterpunch

“Planters said that slavery was a peculiar domestic institution, a way of life. Abolitionists answered that it was the ugliest of businesses. For too long historians tried to split the difference but really took a side by calling it ‘the South,’ a society or a culture. Drawing on the most recent scholarship, Ned and Constance Sublette get it right: it was an industry, a particular market-tested brand with varieties adapted to its changing times and places. And like all industries it had a politics, too, that affected producers, consumers, and the workers who, in this peculiar case, were not only labor but also capital and, in the bodies of their children, product. The three-hundred-year story has rarely, if ever, been told so fully or so well.” —David Waldstreicher, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, author of Slavery's Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification 

“The American story cannot be told without a knowledge of its complete history. In The American Slave Coast, the Sublettes have painstakingly provided readers with both a compelling narrative and a well-documented and factual rendering. In addition, to its many other applications, The American Slave Coast will be extremely useful as an exemplar in the contemplated National Slavery Museum in Virginia.” —L. Douglas Wilder, Former Governor of Virginia and author of Son of Virginia: A Life in America's Political Arena

“It is not a quick read. But it is an excellent and important one, and should be first on the list of anyone wanting to better understand slavery and race issues in America.” —San Diego Book Review

“[T]his is a useful addition to the historiography of slavery.” —CHOICE