Hanging Captain Gordon: The Life and Trial of an American Slave Trader

Entering the dense fray of Civil War-themed books is this fast-paced story of the 1862 hanging of Nathaniel Gordon, one of many ship captains charged with breaking an 1820 law banning slave-trading, but the only one to ever be executed. Soodalter, a former museum curator and history teacher, uses this singular event as a prism to provide an overview of Civil War-era politics, Lincoln's presidency and the maritime economy of slavery. Informative, but never dull or pedantic, this book hums along quickly, glossing over well-documented areas and concentrating instead on Gordon, the son of a sea merchant, who was arrested at the helm of a ship containing 897 slaves near the mouth of the Congo River. Deported to New York to stand trial, Gordon found himself at the center of a sensationalist frenzy, caught between the gears of a nation in flux. Soodalter's vivid depictions of slaving voyages present the squalid conditions aboard slaving ships and New York City's infamous ""Tombs"" prison where Gordon awaited his execution and the attitude among slavers and politicians that anti-slavery legislation was largely a paper tiger. Soodalter's take on slave-trading and its ancillary politics is accessible, and though he retreads some heavily covered material, his survey of slaving vis-a;-vis the Gordon case will appeal to casual and serious readers of history.