Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South

Winner of the Lincoln Prize

Stampp’s classic study of American slavery as a deliberately chosen, practical system of controlling and exploiting labor is one of the most important and influential works of American history written in our time.

“A thoughtful and deeply moving book. . . . Mr. Stampp wants to show specifically what slavery was like, why it existed, and what it did to the American people.”—Bruce Catton