But over the long term, enslaved women, because of the children they would potentially produce over the course of their lives, were far more valuable. If slave owners were patient, “producing children was a cheap alternative to purchasing them at the market.”69 Henrietta Butler’s mistress Emily Haidee clearly knew the value that enslaved women possessed, and she developed two long-term financial strategies to maximize their worth. She not only forced Butler’s mother to engage in nonconsensual sex with enslaved men so she could “have babies all de time,” she made Butler do the same. When the
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