Joshua D. Rothman is professor of history and chair of the Department of History at the University of Alabama. He is the author of Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787–1861 (2003), Reforming America, 1815–1860 (2009), and Flush Times and Fever Dreams: A Story of Capitalism and Slavery in the Age of Jackson (2012). His most recent book is The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America (2021).