![]() ![]() The Sublettes also recast the 1808 abolition of the transatlantic slave trade as trade protectionism. Slaves were, to slavers, worth more than everything else they could imagine combined. It's hard to quantify just how valuable people were as commodities, but the Sublettes try to convey it: By a conservative estimate, in 1860 the total value of American slaves was $4 billion, far more than the gold and silver then circulating nationally ($228.3 million, "most of it in the North," the authors add), total currency ($435.4 million), and even the value of the South's total farmland ($1.92 billion). ![]() That made slaves not just a commodity, but the closest thing to money that white breeders had. As long as the slave power continued to grow, breeders could literally bank on future demand and increasing prices. The price of slaves was anchored by industry in other states that consumed slaves in the production of rice and sugar, and constant territorial expansion. Here is how the American slave-breeding industry worked, according to the Sublettes: Some states (most importantly Virginia) produced slaves as their main domestic crop. Thomas Jefferson bragged to George Washington that the birth of black children was increasing Virginia's capital stock by four percent annually. How then to account for the four million black slaves who were tilling fields in 1860? "The South," the Sublettes write, "did not only produce tobacco, rice, sugar, and cotton as commodities for sale it produced people." Slavers called slave-breeding "natural increase," but there was nothing natural about producing slaves it took scientific management. Though over 12.7 million Africans were forced onto ships to the Western hemisphere, estimates only have 400,000-500,000 landing in present-day America. In fact, most American slaves were not kidnapped on another continent. From a review of the book at Pacific Standard: Instead of treating slavery as a source of unpaid labor, as it is typically understood, they focus on the ownership aspect: people as property, merchandise, collateral, and capital. Slavery was always about economics, and the breeding farms were profitable.The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry by Ned & Constance Sublette is a book which offers an alternate view of slavery in the United States. Enslaved people could be shipped by rail and boat, allowing them to arrive in better condition and thus fetch a higher price. Slavery, not tobacco, was Virginia's primary domestic crop. Richmond was a port city that exported 10,000 to 20,000 enslaved people a month to states further south and west. The breeding farms were an essential part of the slave economy. The breeders only wanted a child that could be sold. It could be someone they know, perhaps a niece, aunt, sister, or mother. The enslaved people were often given hoods or bags over their heads to keep them from knowing who they were having forced sex with. The slave population of the breeding farm was mostly women and children not old enough to be sold, and a limited number of men whose job was to impregnate as many slave women as possible. His "jail" was a compound surrounded by a 12-foot fence with iron spikes. Robert Lumpkin was one of the industry leaders in the slave-breeding business.
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