Kathleen M. Hilliard is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Iowa State University. She received her BA from Wake Forest University and her PhD from the University of South Carolina, where she worked under the direction of Mark M. Smith and won the Wienefeld Award for the best dissertation in history. Since 2006 she has studied and taught about the Old South, slavery, and the social and cultural contradictions of antebellum America at the University of Idaho and Iowa State University. Portions of her work have been published in major essay collections and presented in scholarly meetings in the United States, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom. She has served on the Editorial Board for Agricultural History and Gale/Cengage's 'Slavery and Anti-Slavery' digital history project.

'Kathleen Hilliard has written an extraordinary book. In it, she breaks new ground in her investigation of black and white relationships in the antebellum South, and on the internal slave economy, illicit trade, and consumerism. The book is grounded in the careful exploration of excellent sources, especially archival primary materials. There is no question that this book is going to shake up slavery studies drastically. Although the internal economy of slavery has been studied for nearly thirty years now, we've never had a study like this.' Orville Vernon Burton, Creativity Professor of Humanities, Clemson University, and Emeritus University Distinguished Teacher/Scholar, University of Illinois

• Introduction; 1. Money and moralism; 2. Slaves and spending; 3. Servants served; 4. Black markets; 5. Gilt chains; 6. The choice; Conclusion.