‘Here is a graceful chronicle of a wretched moment in history. This is a work of restoration, culling a crucial narrative from the silences of the past. But most crucially, this is a restoration of the humanity to those enslaved black people who were so commonly denied it.' William Cobb, Columbia University

‘The Weeping Time offers a remarkable prism through which to explore the human dimensions of slavery and reconstruction in the American South. Using the March 1859 auction of some 440 slaves in Savannah, Georgia as a focal point, Anne C. Bailey explores the history of the slave owning Butler family, the history of the Butler plantations on the Georgia Sea Islands, and the post-slavery experiences of the slaves sold at that auction to illuminate broader themes of race in American history. She offers a moving and engaging social history of an understudied aspect of American slavery.' Thomas Dublin, Co-editor, Women and Social Movements in the United States and Bartle Distinguished Professor, State University of New York, Binghamton

‘Bailey's engrossing saga reminds us that the auction block was a crucial shared experience that shaped the consciousness of millions of African Americans. The Weeping Time is about the largest slave auction in American history, but it is also a remarkably vivid story of individual lives forever transformed when people are treated as property.' Clayborne Carson, Stanford University, California

‘A meticulously researched and beautifully told story of slavery. Bailey makes us see and feel the experiences of those enslaved on the Butler plantation and their descendants.' Mary Frances Berry, Geraldine Segal Professor of American Social Thought, Professor of History, Professor of Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania

‘The black body on slavery's auction block was at once commerce, exhibit, and spectacle; it was also the stuff of mourning, memorialization and mobilization. Such is the grand and grave subject of this absorbing book on the mother of all slave auctions in the United States, a tale told with verve and an eye for detail. A bedrock work.' Michael West, Binghamton University, State University of New York

‘Bailey has written a powerful study of African chattel slaves sold at huge profit, on the eve of the Civil War, to brokers from New York to Louisiana. Her approach to the experience of the auction block, like her portrayals of the modern black family, intent today on assembling fragments of their fractured past, is both interdisciplinary and humane. This outstanding contribution to understanding American capitalism should be compulsory reading in American history courses.' Herbert P. Bix, Emeritus Professor of History and Sociology, Binghamton University, State University of New York