Status Updates From The Reckoning: From the Sec...

By the 1860s Cuba had a free population of about 1 million, enjoying some of the highest per capita incomes in the world ($129.94); lower than that for the free population of the United States ($144) but slightly above that for Britain ($126).

"During Reconstruction, whites had burned down black schoolhouses. Afterwards this was no longer necessary, since the same effect could be achieved by cutting to the bone state educational finance to black education."

such legendary heroes of the war to free the slaves as Sherman engaged in the methodical genocide of the Indian nations. By 1885 some 13 million American Indians had been killed, a number roughly equivalent to the total number of Africans brought to the New World in the whole history of the Atlantic slave trade.

"'In total, then, close to $600 million – equivalent to a third of total ordinary revenues over the period – can be seen as a reasonable low estimate for the Federal Government’s expenditure on western expansion'"

"'slavery retarded regional economic growth by absorbing the savings of slave owners, “crowding out” investment in physical capital – including the forms of capital formation represented by improvements in the value of land'"

"Credit promoted crop specialization within the South, as well as the opening of new areas and a shift from tobacco and rice to cotton, sugar and wheat. Slave-holdings supplied collateral and the slaves themselves were – quite literally – a mobile asset playing their onerous part in the slaveholders capitalism"

mortality rates for Brazilian slaves were high, but not much higher than for slaves in the United States. Thus the Brazilian slave aged ten had a life expectancy of between thirty-four and thirty-eight years, while the US slave had a life expectancy of forty years. Similarly, the Brazilian slave had a life expectancy of twenty-three to twenty-six years, while the US slave had a life expectancy of twenty-seven years.

"The Cuban Slave Code of 1842, widely opposed and ignored by mill owners, stipulated that slaves should work for no more than sixteen hours a day. In fact, eighteen- or even twenty-hour days are frequently referred to as the norm."

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."