slaves in the family

I've been reading "Slaves in the Family" by Edward Ball, purchased at the New York Historical Society Museum. This whole time I've been thinking I needed to find the descendents of the slaves my family owned and write a book about it. I was happy to see that Edward Ball did just that, which frees me up to work on this idea in my own way. A quote that stood out to me:

"The subject of the plantations stirred conflicting emotions. I felt proud (how rare the stories!) and sentimental (how touching the cast of family characters!). At the same, the slave business was a crime that had not fully been acknowledged. It would be a mistake to say that I felt guilt for the past. A person cannot be culpable for the acts of others, long dead, that he or she could not have influenced. Rather than responsible, I felt accountable for what had happened, called on to try to explain it. I also felt shame about the broken society that had washed up when the tide of slavery receded."