The Star-Spangled Slave Trade of the 1850s: My Talk at Politics and Prose

This is part of my talk at Politics and Prose in Washington D.C., which included many interesting questions raised by the audience.
At about 40 minutes into the presentation a man asked about the 
transatlantic slave trade in the 1850s, and in the six minutes that followed I tried to convey some sense of the horrors of that traffic—most of which was conducted between the west coast of Africa and Cuba, but under the flag of the United States.

Slaves in Cuba

I subsequently wrote a piece for The Daily Beast adapted from the book and focusing on the issue of the Cuban slave trade.

This is a link to the full presentation at Politics and Prose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=31&v=yf0QSdGBirg