Dr. Robert Colby is an Assistant Professor of History in the Department of History at the University of Mississippi.
Research Interests
Dr. Robert Colby's research explores the Civil War era, with a focus on slavery, emancipation, and the lived experience of the conflict. His first book, An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South (published by Oxford University Press in 2024) explores the survival of the domestic slave trade during the Civil War, using wartime slave commerce to examine the endurance of Confederate nationalism, economic and social life during the war, and the contested onset of African-American freedom. He has published in the Journal of the Civil War Era, Journal of the Early Republic, and Slavery and Abolition, as well as in edited volumes on reconciliation following Civil Wars and emotions and business history. He is currently at work on a microhistory of enslavement, war, and Reconstruction.
Biography
A Virginia native, Robert Colby earned his BA from the University of Virginia and his MA and PhD from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His book, An Unholy Traffic received the John L. Nau Book Prize from the Nau Center for Civil War History at UVA, as well as the Nonfiction Award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. It was also a finalist for the Gilder-Lehrman Institute's Lincoln Prize, awarded annually to the best book in Civil War history. His work has previously won the Society of American Historians' Allan Nevins Prize and the Society of Civil War Historians' Anne J. Bailey Prize and Anthony Kaye Memorial Essay Award, and was a finalist for the Southern Historical Association's C. Vann Woodward Award. Before joining the University of Mississippi's History Department in 2022, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for American Studies at Christopher Newport University.
Publications
Book:
An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South. Oxford University Press, 2024.
Winner of the 2025 John L. Nau Book Prize.Winner of the 2025 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters' Nonfiction award.
Finalist for the 2025 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize.
Articles:
“‘Negroes Will Bear Fabulous Prices’: The Economics of Wartime Slave Commerce and Visions of the Confederate Future,” Journal of the Civil War Era, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Dec. 2020), 439-468.
“‘Observant of the Laws of this Commonwealth”: A Free Black Family Between Forced Migration and Slave Capitalism,” Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Sept. 2022).
“What ‘The Books…Would Tell’: Slavery, Freedom, and History in Slave Traders’ Archives.” Slavery & Abolition, Vol. 43, No. 3, (Sept. 2022).
“Lee Returns to the Capitol: A Case Study in Reconciliation and Its Limits,” in Paul Quigley and James Hawdon, eds., Reconciliation After Civil Wars: Global Perspectives (London and New York: Routledge, 2018).
Courses Taught
- HST 130 Intro to US History to 1877
- HST 404 US- The Civil War Era, 1848-1877
- HST 422 The Rise and Fall of American Slavery
- HST 440 The Military History of the Civil War
- HST 490 Problems in History- America
- HST 494 Directed Readings in History
- HST 498 Undergrad Research Seminar in History
- HST 605 Readings - US through Reconstruction
- HST 611 Readings - Era of the US Civil War
Education
B.A. History, University of Virginia Main Campus (2009)
M.A. History, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (2015)
Ph.D. History, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (2019)