Wealth wrung from black hands launched the fortunes of northeastern port cities in Rhode Island; filled the Massachusetts textile mills with cotton; and capitalized the future Wall Street banks through loans that accepted enslaved people as collateral. In 1860, the four million human beings in the domestic slave trade had a market value of $3 billion. In fact, by the time war loomed, New York merchants had gotten so rich from the slave economy—40 percent of the city’s exporting businesses through warehousing, shipping insurance, and sales were Southern cotton exports—that the mayor of New York
...more
