Swarthout’s Reviews > The Reckoning: From the Second Slavery to Abolition, 1776-1888 > Status Update

cuba: "In 1865 the tobacco workers won the right to employ public readers – lectores – to inform and entertain the cigar rollers while they worked. The workers made their own selection of newspaper articles, short stories, novels by Guy de Maupassant or Charles Dickens."

"For the slave-holders, the most vital alliance was with non-slave-owning whites in the South, who not only had to be kept from rebelling against slave-owner rule, but also represented the first line of defence against slave and Indian revolt."

They had great political influence, and could have offered credit only to yeoman farmers, who could have used family labour to cultivate cotton, coffee and sugar....they did none of these things because slave-less farms were not a good credit prospect – they lacked ‘collateral’. Slave-holding planters, on the other hand, had liquid assets at their disposal.