What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848, Daniel Walker Howe The Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War, 1848-1861, David M. Potter The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry, Ned and Constance Sublette Ideology of Slavery: Pro-slavery Thought in the Antebellum South, Drew Gilprin Faust They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South, Stephane E. Jones-Howard, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom, Walter Johnson

classics on the subject: Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made, Eugene D. Genovese The Mind of the South, W.J. Cash Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, David W. Blight

these are just from my tbr, (personal note: this is a dark heavy subject, don’t feel obligated to traumatize yourself, or feel bad if you intellectualize what you read as a coping mechanism)