In this passage it explains the economic values of slavery, and how slaves were considered commodities to the slave owners. This was due to their involvement in the tobacco, sugar, and cotton trade. This idea of people being property was no question to many slave owners, traders, and just people in the US. Part of the passage that really struck me was when the amount of money that was spent to purchase a slave. An example price for a male could be $610 which is an equivalent to $19,447 in today’s currency. Even though there shouldn’t be a price on a human life, it was a considerable amount of money that was being spent. This means that the slave trade must have been essential to the US economy during this time period because slave owners were making thousands of dollars, and they knew that using slave labor put money in their pockets more than what they spent. A human life that could be traded over and over again for more or less, and could be put to use on a plantation. This idea of commodification was carried throughout most of the US, and it’s terrible to base economic wealth on the lives of innocents, which is something that I found terrible but also interesting.
-Anura Andrea Namachchivaya