As commonly understood, slavery in the United States officially came to an end with the surrender of the Confederacy and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. Yet various forms of human bondage and forced labor continued across the United States and its territories long after the conclusion of the Civil War and into the twentieth century. In this podcast, historian Christina Snyder from The Pennsylvania State University discusses her work, examining why multiple forms of unfree labor and bondage persisted across the United States long after chattel slavery was abolished.

Christina Snyder, who earned her 2007 PhD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is McCabe Greer Professor of the American Civil War Era at The Pennsylvania State University. Snyder is a historian of colonialism, race, and slavery, with a focus on North America from the pre-contact era through the nineteenth century. Snyder’s latest book is Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson (Oxford University Press, 2017), which won the Francis Parkman Prize and the History of Education Outstanding Book Prize. Her first book, Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America (Harvard University Press, 2010), also earned a wide range of accolades, including the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Book Prize, the James H. Broussard Prize, and the John C. Ewers Prize. Snyder’s current book project is tentatively titled Slavery After the Civil War: The Slow Death and Many Afterlives of Bondage.