Slave traders like Franklin, Armfield, and Ballard were vital gears in the machine of slavery, and

they helped define the financial, political, legal, cultural, and demographic contours of a growing

nation, playing crucial roles as conduits of wealth and suppliers of enslaved people whose labor

and asset values were integral to the entire American economy. I began research on this book

thinking I might come to understand how and why someone would make an occupation of slave

trading. I confess it still eludes me. The observation that Franklin, Armfield, and Ballard lived in

a nation that sanctioned and rewarded the market exchange of people as property is true.

And it is too easy to suggest they were simply monsters. There was considerable monstrosity in

their business, but monsters are by definition abnormal and unnatural, creatures with limited

control or understanding of the things they do. Franklin, Armfield, and Ballard chose their paths.

They knew what they were doing. But they were men untroubled by conscience. They thought

little about the moral quality of their actions, and at their core was a hollow, an emptiness. They

understood that Black people were human beings. They just did not care. Basic decency was

something they really owed only to white people, and when it came down to it, Black people’s

lives did not matter all that much. Black lives were there for the taking. Their world casts its long

shadow onto ours.