Americans of the twenty-first century may look back upon them as our precursors in some ways, for like them we too spend even more than our relatively high average incomes and slide more and more into debt to outside creditors (in their case, northerners and Europeans). Their strong sense of common interest enabled the slaveowning planters to become the most politically powerful social group in the United States. They dominated southern state governments. The Constitution’s three-fifths rule (counting five of their slaves as three free persons) enhanced their representation in Congress and the
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