Slave-Trading in the Old South by Frederic Bancroft, an independently wealthy freelance historian, is a classic[1] history of domestic slave trade in the antebellum United States.

[2] Bancroft's book "provides still unrivalled profiles of great numbers of traders, many of whom he found to have the highest social standing.

"[5] William Allen White wrote "a curious and terrible book is this...a scholarly piece of work, documented carefully and written with some sense of historical perspective.

The father of one of them in 1859-60 kept a store and bakery next door to the Brown pen, when it was in the middle of the block and on the north side of Market st.Capt.

"I return the list [from the Directory for 1852] you sent me with [my] (X) cross-mark opposite the names of those I personally knew were "nigger- traders," as they were called by the vulgar..."'fo' de war."

— Letter of July 30, 1917, to the author.Bancroft's book thus became a "definitive study of the domestic slave trade" for decades.

[6] The book has a recognizable quality of "moral outrage" but "the evidence he presents has stood the test of time...research that followed has confirmed many of his points.

"[7] Contemporary researchers continue to draw on Bancroft's work: a journalist-turned-local historian studying newspaper coverage of slavery in East Tennessee wrote in 2022 that while doing his research, "I bought several books on slavery, the best of which was one titled Slave Trading and the Old South [sic], printed in 1931."