Gavin Wright

“POLITICS, MARKETS, AND SLAVE PRICES The price of slaves was a pervasive center of attention in the antebellum South. Slave prices were a common topic of everyday conversation and a frequent object of discussion in southern newspapers. Protecting the value of slaveholdings dominated judicial rulings in estate settlements, liability cases, and other areas of the law. References to the enormous aggregate dollar value of slave property were a standard feature of proslavery political rhetoric. For example, fire-eater William Lowndes Yancey exclaimed to a Louisville audience on the eve of the 1860 presidential election: “Again: Look at the value of that property. These slaves are worth, according to Virginia prices $2800,000,000 … Twenty-eight hundred millions of dollars are to be affected by the decision of this question.”
― Gavin Wright, Slavery and American Economic Development

“Americans have found it particularly difficult to come to terms with our “slave origins,” perhaps because the national history of the United States makes it easy to forget that the thirteen mainland colonies were only a part of the larger trading network of the British Empire, and the northern states all abolished slavery within two decades of the American Revolution. But in the colonial era, slavery was legal in all parts of British America, and it was economically significant even in many areas that later became free states. Slave labor was used successfully in such”
― Gavin Wright, Slavery and American Economic Development