Warning: This content may be disturbing to descendants of American slaves. Everyone else, please read on.
Slavery=Money
One of the things I do in my work on a regular basis is process American documents (usually legal records) which name slaves, then turn those names into ancestors in African American family trees. This week I was working on documents for a man who died and left an estate that included eleven slaves. This is pretty small potatoes in comparison with say a plantation owner who held hundreds of slaves.
People today are shocked slavery ever existed. How could people be so inhumane? How could a population who called themselves Christians treat people in a manner that was so very obviously not Christian? Couldn’t they see what they were doing? Then we follow that by saying if we had lived back then, we would have made very different choices. But would we have? Besides the fact that the groupthink was very strong during that time–independent thought being completely discouraged, one must consider the economics of it all.
When you work with these legal documents during the time of slavery you get a very clear picture of why the south fought so hard to keep slavery: Slavery=Money
Here’s an example:
This gentleman who died with eleven slaves–those eleven people had an appraised value of $6250 (yes people were valued just like any other property!). His personal property (like household goods) and livestock only added up to $878.29. But let’s put that in today’s terms so you can get a real look at how much money we’re talking about. A dollar in 1840 was equivalent to $35 today. That means slaves today=$218,750 and other property (not including real estate) today=$30,740.15. So 85% of this person’s estate value came from slaves. Imagine you were told that you would instantly lose $218,750 of property because the government thought it was cruel that you had it? Would you meekly hand that over? Now let’s put that in terms of plantation owners who held 100+ slaves. $6250×10=$62,500 and in today’s money would be $2,187,500!!
When you ask yourself why slavery could have ever existed, you can answer with this one simple word: money. It was a very lucrative business because slave labor produced the goods that made lots of money for the owners. Slave traders didn’t take time to care they were selling people. They only saw a sellable commodity. Did you know slaves had so much value, they were often used as collateral for mortgages and loans? And when slave owners needed some ready cash, most of them didn’t care they were splitting up families. Husbands and wives were sold to different people. Woman and their children were sold to different people. This is a huge reason we are now having to painstakingly piece family trees back together.
In order for us to move forward in America today, and move away from the racism that is still so strongly entrenched in our country, we must take a good hard look at what slavery really was. Understanding that it was solely about accumulating money is the first step.
Follow me on Patreon to help me connect all 10+ million enslaved ancestors to their descendants.
