Review: Short but excellent.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 7, 2012
Very short but it packs a lot of research into the space.Note that it's about life at that time and only gives a nod to the details of the reasons for the rebellion since that's outside its scope.My one quibble: this essay doesn't describe the sheer economic value of slavery then, instead it makes slavery seem to be just an already outdated custom. In truth, it was a massive economic engine. See the Smithsonian magazine's recent article:The Dark Side of Thomas JeffersonA new portrait of the founding father challenges the long-held perception of Thomas Jefferson as a benevolent slaveholderBy Henry WiencekSmithsonian magazine, October 2012[...]"A startling statistic emerged in the 1970s, when economists taking a hardheaded look at slavery found that on the eve of the Civil War, enslaved black people, in the aggregate, formed the second most valuable capital asset in the United States. David Brion Davis sums up their findings: "In 1860, the value of Southern slaves was about three times the amount invested in manufacturing or railroads nationwide." The only asset more valuable than the black people was the land itself."Other sources will tell you that it was also slavery unto death in the deeper South, with disease and privation carrying off more slaves than were born, making the cessation of slave trading before the revolution a tremendous economic shock to the South, which at that time had to constantly bring in more slaves to replace those worked to death. Much land could only be worked by slaves given the rates of yellow fever, malaria, etc. Freemen wouldn't dare remain in those fields.