You’ve mentioned slave rebellions in the American south and post-civil war politics, but can you shed any light on the absence of slave rebellions or strikes during the war itself? At the least I can’t find much written on it.

Really? Because there’s been a ton written about it, ever since W.E.B DuBois’ Black Reconstruction (1935), which reinterpreted the mass exodus of slaves from the plantations to the Union Army as a general strike against the slave economy, was picked up again in the 1980s.

Some books I’d recommend that followed from DuBois’ work:

• Vincent Harding, There Is a River (1981)
• Eric Foner, Reconstruction (1988)
• Ira Berlin et al., Slaves No More (1992)
• Julie Saville, The Work of Reconstruction (1994)