But they did discover hundreds of Union prisoners of war locked in the tobacco warehouses downtown. When they got to Danville, they didn’t find the fugitive rebel. The blue-coated soldiers of the Army of the Potomac were hot on his trail. Davis stayed a week, but then he had to keep running. Or so Jefferson Davis had proclaimed on April 3, after he fled Richmond.

Back in 1865, it had been the last capital of the Confederacy. Releasing his breath in a rush of decision, he steps up to the door of the handmade house and knocks.ĭanville is on the western edge of the Virginia Piedmont. On the porch of number 513, he rearranges the notepads under his arm. Claude Anderson parks his car on the side of Holbrook Street in Danville. 'We don't want to hear that at its root, the economic growth depends to a large extent on slavery.' Book Excerpt: 'The Half Has Never Been Told'Ī beautiful late April day, seventy-two years after slavery ended in the United States.

'Slavery continues to have an impact on America in the most basic economic sense,' Baptist told Here & Now's Jeremy Hobson. History professor Edward Baptist is author of 'The Half Has Not Been Told.' (Cornell University)Įdward Baptist argues in his new book, ' The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism,' that the forced migration and subsequent harsh treatment of slaves in the cotton fields was integral to establishing the United States as a world economic power. The cheapest and best cotton came from the southern United States.

Twitter facebook Email This article is more than 8 years old.ĭuring the middle of the 1800s, cotton became the world's largest commodity.

The other half has never been told