This country became great on the backs of enslaved people
because of cotton's leading role in the world economy.
From ttps://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/why-was-cotton-king/
<snip> Slave-produced cotton “brought commercial ascendancy to New York City, was the driving force for territorial expansion in the Old Southwest and fostered trade between Europe and the United States,” according to Gene Dattel. In fact, cotton productivity, no doubt due to the sharecropping system that replaced slavery, remained central to the American economy for a very long time: “Cotton was the leading American export from 1803 to 1937.”
What did cotton production and slavery have to do with Great Britain? The figures are astonishing. As Dattel explains: “Britain, the most powerful nation in the world, relied on slave-produced American cotton for over 80 per cent of its essential industrial raw material. English textile mills accounted for 40 percent of Britain’s exports. One-fifth of Britain’s twenty-two million people were directly or indirectly involved with cotton textiles.”
And, finally, New England? As Ronald Bailey shows, cotton fed the textile revolution in the United States. “In 1860, for example, New England had 52 percent of the manufacturing establishments and 75 percent of the 5.14 million spindles in operation,” he explains. The same goes for looms. In fact, Massachusetts “alone had 30 percent of all spindles, and Rhode Island another 18 percent.” Most impressively of all, “New England mills consumed 283.7 million pounds of cotton, or 67 percent of the 422.6 million pounds of cotton used by U.S. mills in 1860.” In other words, on the eve of the Civil War, New England’s economy, so fundamentally dependent upon the textile industry, was inextricably intertwined, as Bailey puts it, “to the labor of black people working as slaves in the U.S. South.”
End quote.
Furthermore, US slave labor produced other high-value crops for trading, including tobacco and indigo. But cotton was king.
I urge you to read this entire piece. The ultimate credit for creating the powerhouse that became the United States is due almost entirely--I would say entirely--to enslaved African American people. The notion that they have been treated so cruelly after the end of slavery (I recommend the book "Slavery by Another Name"
is obscene. That any white person in America feels he or she has not benefited from the fact of slavery simply because "my family didn't own slaves, so it has nothing to do with me" is delusional. Descendants of Irish, Italian and other countries that sent large populations to this country who say "My predecessors were discriminated against, too, and we made it to prosperity in the New World" don't know what they are talking about and are fools.
The idea that any kind of reasonable reparations can be made at this point is dumbfounding. How in the hell can we white people begin to even think of how to compensate descendants of enslaved people when we are still allowing our police to kill them? Allowing the display of flags and statues honoring those who fought to retain and spread their enslavement? There are so many things we need to do right now to simply stop abusing our benefactors, and yet many of us drag our heels at the very notion.
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https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/why-was-cotton-king/
