the value of the annual production of goods rose from $2 million in 1865 to what in 1900

Measuring Slavery in 2020 Dollars*

by

Samuel H. Williamson

Miami University
MeasuringWorth
sam@mswth.org

and

Louis P. Cain
Loyola University Chicago
Northwestern University
lcain@northwestern.edu

Within the colonies that became the United states of america, slavery first appeared in Virginia in 1619, twelve years after its founding, and disappeared on June xix, 1865, when slaves in Texas were emancipated.¹ It was legal in all the British colonies, but it was practiced on a larger scale in what became the US South and the British Islands of the Caribbean. African slavery in the South was largely a response to the greater demand for labor on tobacco, rice, and indigo plantations. Northern farms were generally smaller, family unit-sized plots of land with the family supplying about of the labor. Before the American Revolution, there was no meaning movement for abolition. By the early on 1800s, virtually Northern states had passed laws in favor of abolition, but the acts called for gradual abolitionism.

In the South, on the other hand, slavery became an ingrained economical and legal institution. Slaves and their progeny were the property of an possessor, and slaves were owned until they died. They could be bought and sold; their owners controlled their lives and those of their children. When slaves were sold, the contract was a legal document, even to the extent that a buyer could sue the seller if a slave was sold nether fake pretenses. Even slaves themselves had some protection under the law; they could not be abandoned or executed.

Before independence, the laws of the colonies could non be inconsistent with English law. Chief Justice Lord William Mansfield in the Somersett case (heard in London in 1772) held that English language law did not support slavery, a ruling that eventually led to the peaceful extinction of African slavery in the British Empire. By then, the Americans were on a different path. In the Constitutional Convention discussions of 1787, it was held that slavery was not a moral issue but a affair of "involvement" only. Some delegates believed that slavery was going to die out. Virginia had attempted several times unilaterally to finish the slave merchandise to Virginia ports, just the Board of Merchandise lawyers in London had overruled it. The federal government prohibited the trade in slaves beginning in 1808, simply statesmanship and jurisprudence could not notice a way to terminate the institution. Within a decade of the Constitutional Convention, Eli Whitney's cotton fiber gin appeared, which is popularly credited with sparking an explosion in cotton production in the Southward. This explanation may be partly true, but it is besides the case that the technological improvements in spinning and weaving in England created a big increase in the demand for cotton, a fabric much preferred to wool. These events together reenergized the demand for slaves.

Slavery is a subject field that most Americans have confronted as part of their education, but there are many aspects of slavery that accept been left to the dim mists of history. This paper will review some of the bones dimensions of the economic science of slavery in the The states and put them in perspective by showing what the financial magnitudes of the "peculiar institution" might be in the relative prices of today. In particular, in 1860 there were nearly iv million slaves and their boilerplate market value was around $800, but what does that mean?ⁱⁱ How much would that be in today'southward dollars? Answers to such questions are not simple.

Comments posted to MeasuringWorth indicate there is considerable electric current public involvement -- and public confusion -- in regard to such questions. Our intention is to present, for the first time, macroeconomic and microeconomic dimensions of slavery in values measured by today's dollars. Nosotros are addressing two audiences: the public who know relatively little nearly these dimensions, and the specialists who may have forgotten that the relative magnitude of these dimensions would be conservatively described as big.

Why does anything have value?

A budgetary value can be measured by a transaction when something is bought and sold or as an expected value of an asset currently held. Some avails have value because of the potential income they can generate. An instance would be a piece of capital equipment, such as a cotton gin for which planters would pay to have their cotton processed or a slave who would pick the cotton.

Other avails may have value because of their potential resale value, such as land or a rare painting. The owners of a painting cull to have part of wealth invested in something that does non generate electric current income, either because of an expectation that information technology will appreciate or because they wish to "consume" the pleasure of owning information technology. These assets also may give their owner status and power. Owning a Rembrandt painting gives 1 bragging rights amidst art collectors. Owning half the acres in the county gives i lots of influence in local politics, regardless of whether the acres are in production or non.

What is the motivation for owning a slave;
what determines the price of a slave at a given point in time?

The need for a slave is a derived need, as is that for whatsoever productive resources. Information technology is derived from the need for the output that resource helps to produce. There was an agile market for slaves throughout the antebellum period, meaning that slave owners believed the buy of a slave would prove to be a profitable expenditure, fifty-fifty though that expenditure required a considerable amount of money.ⁱⁱⁱAs nosotros will explain below, at the fourth dimension the South seceded from the Union, the buy of a unmarried slave represented as much equally $180,000 and more in today's prices. This was twice the boilerplate of 14 years earlier, indicating a sustained growth in the demand for slaves. Economists would say that these observations alone betoken that the profitability of "investing" in a slave was increasing essentially.

Why would a slave take so much value? A short reply is the value of a slave is the value of the expected output or services the slave tin generate minus the costs of maintaining that person (i.east., food, wear, shelter, etc.) over his or her lifetime.^fourA quick listing of the information that take to be considered in determining the value of a slave'south expected revenue would include sex, historic period, location, how much he or she is likely to produce (a factor that included a slave's health and physical condition), and the toll of the output in the marketplace. For a female slave, an additional thing to consider would be the value of the children she might acquit.

In addition, there is considerable prove that slaves were worked harder than complimentary labor in Southern agronomics; what slaves could be induced to produce in bondage was greater than what they could be expected to produce with the freedom to make their own choice of labor or leisure.⁵

As these outputs and costs are in the future, they must exist discounted to their present value, then an possessor must choose a discount rate. And, as they are in the future, there is uncertainty in determining what they are, and then the present value of a slave is an estimate made past the current current or a prospective owner.⁶ In general, most economic historians believe that slavery was assisting, even at these expensive prices.

Figure 1 demonstrates how the toll of slaves varied with respect to age, sex activity, and location during the antebellum menses. Every bit one can see, prices were higher in the New S than in the Old South (united states along the Atlantic coast) and higher for males than for females.^vii The statistics on slave prices prove that healthy young adult men in the prime of their working lives had the highest price, followed past females in the childbearing years. Young adult males had more value equally they were stronger, could work harder in the fields, and could be expected to piece of work at such a level for more than years. Young adult women had value over and above their power to piece of work in the fields; they were able to have children who by law were as well slaves of the owner of the mother. Old and infirm slaves had low, even "negative," prices considering their maintenance costs were potentially higher than the value of their production. Similarly, young children had low prices because the "cost" of raising them usually exceeded their annual production until they became teenagers.

Effigy one

Age-Sexual practice Contour of Slave Values
Louisiana Male 18-30 = 100

Source: Source: Historical Statistics, Table Bb215-218. Index of slave values, by age, sexual practice, and region: 1850. All the values are indexed to that of Louisiana males aged xviii-xxx.

Those who have researched slave prices have discovered that a big number of boosted variables went into the determination of the toll of any detail slave at a particular point in time. A premium was paid if the slave was an artisan -- particularly a blacksmith (+55%), a carpenter (+45%), a cook (+20%), or possessed other domestic skills (+15%). On the other hand, a slave's price was discounted if the person was known to be a runaway (-60%), was crippled (-sixty%), had a vice such every bit drinking (-50%), or was physically dumb (-30%). In general, the discount for each of the slaves was slightly larger for females than for males.⁸The prices presented above are average prices for the slaves transacted in a given yr. A person studying their family's history might meet a notation that a family member purchased a slave at a given toll or that a former slave purchased his or a family unit member's liberty at a given price. Without information regarding these details, it is hard to interpret what the price of a single slave means.

The path of the average of slave prices tin be seen in Figure 2. While much of the movement tin can be explained past what is happening in the cotton marketplace, the first two spikes are also related to general economical weather. During and subsequently the State of war of 1812 there was a 40% increment in all prices, with the toll of raw cotton wool more than doubling during the same period. In the 1830s, the price of slaves increased rapidly due to expectations bred by discussions to refund the federal budget surplus to the states. Discussions about "internal improvements" (east.chiliad., canals and railroads) led to a boom in land prices and, once again, cotton prices. Later the "Panic of 1837" there was a long depression. Finally, the virtually three-fold increase in prices after 1843 can be explained by several factors, including the rapid increase in the worldwide demand for cotton and increased productivity in the New South attributable to better soil and improvements in the cotton wool constitute. Information technology is clear during this time that the market for slaves was agile, and that slaves were regarded as more valuable.

Figure 2

Average Toll of a Slave Over Fourth dimension
Current dollars

Source: Historical Statistics, Table Bb212. Average Slave Price.

What is the comparable "value" of a slave in today'southward prices?

None of these prices has much meaning to the states today, but they would if we revalue them in today'southward dollars to the corporeality of money slave owners spent 170 years ago.⁹The techniques developed in MeasuringWorth have created ten "measures" to use to compare a monetary value in ane period to one in another, as explained in the essay "Measures of Worth."^x Of these ten, three are useful for discussing the value of a slave. They are: labor or income value, relative earnings and real price. ¹¹Using these measures, the value in 2020 of $400 in 1850 (the average price of a slave that year) ranges from $14,000 to $240,000. Nosotros use the 1850 price in our example, as that was close to the average toll for the entire antebellum period.

Labor or Income Value

Every bit discussed to a higher place, the $400 cost in 1850 represents the expected cyberspace value of the hereafter labor services a slave would provide. Nigh slaves worked on the farms and plantations of their owners, although some slaves were rented out for farm and other types of piece of work. In either instance, the work they did was mostly unskilled. And so, a comparable measure of the value of these services is reflected in the unskilled wage.¹² That is why the labor or income value, using the unskilled wage is the best measure of the value of a slave'south services in today's prices. That $400 would exist $114,000 in today's toll.  As Figure 3 shows during the antebellum catamenia, the value in in today'due south dollars. of a slave ranged from $sixty,000 (in 1809) to $184,000 (in 1859).

Effigy 3

Labor Income Value
of Owning a Slave in 2020 Prices

In other words, we can assume that the unskilled wage a free employee would have received to do similar work to that of a slave is a reasonable approximation of the value slaveowners imputed for labor in the price of a slave. To be articulate, this calculation is not the present value of what ane would have to pay a gratuitous laborer to do the work of a slave and so or now. Recall that the price of a slave measures the boilerplate nowadays value of the net render over that slave's life expectancy. Slaves received room, board and habiliment, but they were responsible for producing a large portion of those items. Slaves were driven to produce a greater output than they would have produced had they been free. Finally, the piece of work calendar week has become shorter and life expectancy longer than in the mid-1850s. This calculation uses the unskilled wage to requite an approximation of what it cost to acquire a slave then in today's dollars.

Remarkably, fifty-fifty at these prices, some slaves, mainly those with artisan skills, might ultimately earn enough to buy themselves and perhaps their family out of slavery. It was not uncommon, specially in the Old Due south, for masters to allow others to hire the services of his or her slaves. This was particularly true of slaves who lived in urban areas, independent of the chief. They were expected to make their own arrangements. "The primary fixed the wage that the slave must bring in. All above this corporeality the slave might continue himself. Employers oft hired the slave'southward time from the possessor at a certain amount and paid the slave an additional wage contingent on the amount of work achieved."^thirteen

Relative Earnings

The $400 average slave toll in 1850 can likewise be idea of every bit a signaling device of status in a flow where the annual per capita income was near $110. Relative earnings can exist viewed equally the ability to buy expensive goods. Today, the center and upper-middle classes aspire to goods and services such as a second habitation, and an expensive auto equally a fashion of showing others that they take "arrived"-- that they accept accomplished some status in the economic system. The boilerplate slave price in 1850 was roughly equal to the average price of a firm, so the purchase of even ane slave would accept given the purchaser some status. The calculation of relative earnings is based on the ratio of GDPs per capita.¹⁴ Consequently $400 in those days corresponds to nearly $240,000 in relative earnings today (see Figure 4.) While it might be amend to make the comparisons using average wealth then and now, those numbers are not available. There is evidence, however, that wealth and income are closely related and move upwards and downwardly together.

Effigy 4

Relative Earnings
of Owning a Slave in 2020 Prices

Real Price

Economists commonly utilize the real cost measure when they are trying to account for the impact of aggrandizement. The real toll today is computed by multiplying the value in the past by the increase in the consumer cost alphabetize (CPI). The event compares that past value to a ratio of the cost of a fixed bundle of goods and services the average consumer buys in each of the two years. In the structure of the CPI bundle, an effort is made to compensate for quality changes in the mix of the bundle over time.¹⁵ Still, the longer the fourth dimension span, the less consequent the comparing. In the 19th century, there were no national surveys to figure out what the boilerplate consumer bought, and slaves were non a consumption good. The earliest budget study used by economic historians was of 397 workmen's families in Massachusetts and was constructed in 1875. These families spent over half their income on food and rented their housing.¹⁶

The MeasuringWorth calculator shows that the "existent toll" of $400 in 1850 would be approximately $13,500 in 2020 prices (see Figure 5). We all can identify with what that amount of coin would purchase today, but hardly anything we would spend $13,500 on today was available 170 years agone. $400 in 1860 would have purchased 4,800 pounds of salary, 3,000 pounds of coffee, 1,600 pounds of butter, or 1,000 gallons of gin. It is unlikely, however, that this was the budget of the typical slave possessor. Most of the food would be produced on the plantation, and housing would have been buildings synthetic by the owner (and his slaves). The "opportunity cost" of the $400 for the slave possessor would accept been supplies for the plantation, or mayhap luxuries and travel.

Effigy 5

The Real Toll of Owning a Slave
in 2020 Dollars

Using the existent price is not the correct alphabetize to employ for measuring the value of a slave's labor services in today's prices. It does, however, give an idea of what the cost of purchasing a slave was in 2020 dollars. Thus, only before the start of the Civil War, the average real toll of a slave in the Usa was $25,000 in current dollars. At that place is ample evidence that there are several meg of people enslaved today, even though slavery is not legal anywhere in the world. There are several organizations such as Anti-Slavery International that will point out that in many places today, slaves sell for as little as (or even less than) $100!

What was the distribution of slave ownership?

A second issue of involvement is slave wealth in both micro- and macro-economic terms. Slaveholders were wealthy individuals both with respect to other Southerners and with respect to the whole country. At the time, the Census Bureau measured wealth in two forms: real estate and personal estate. The land and buildings of a slave plantation were real estate; the slaveholdings were part of personal estate. Together they sum to Full Estate.   On both dimensions, slaveholders were different from other Southerners. The average white Southern family unit in antebellum America lived on a small farm without slaves. Slave buying was the exception, not the rule.

Let u.s. brainstorm by looking at land. Lee Soltow nerveless the data by "spin" sampling from the 1860 census.¹⁷ Post-obit the United states census, he divers a subcontract equally involving at least iii improved acres of land, and it should be noted that this is for farms throughout the United States, not simply the Southward. The size distribution of farms is shown in Table 1.

"Number" is the number of farms in the interval. The stereotypical moving picture of slavery is that it involved a large plantation. Farms that were greater than 500 acres (there are 640 acres in a square mile) comprise just one.31 percent of farms. The vast majority of farms were between xx and 500 acres.

Table one

Size Distribution of Farms - 1860 for farms of iii or more improved acres)
acres	number	pct	cum %	cum %
>grand	five,364	0.27	100.00	0.27
500 - 999	20,319	one.04	99.73	1.31
100- 499	487,041	24.91	98.69	26.23
50 - 99	608,878	31.14	73.77	57.37
20 - 49	616,558	31.54	42.63	88.91
10 - 19	162,178	eight.30	11.09	97.xx
3 - 9	54,676	2.eighty	2.80	100.00
Source: Soltow, table 5.ane

Tabular array two shows that the distribution of slave ownership in Soltow's data is more than skewed than land.

Tabular array 2

Disbribution of Slaves and Estate Value among Costless Developed Males in South - 1860
Number of	Number			Total
slaves	slaveholders	percent	cum %	Estate
>1000	1	0.00005	100.00
500 - 999	13	0.00065	100.00	$957,000
100 - 499	two,278	0.xi	100.00	$160,000
fifty - 99	eight,367	0.42	99.88	72,000
ten - 49	97,333	4.89	99.46	17,200
5 - 10	89,556	four.50	94.57	$8,800
one - 4	187,336	ix.41	90.07	$3,670
0	one,605,116	80.66	80.66	$-
Source: Soltow (1975), tabular array 5.3

By 1860, over lxxx per centum of the free developed males in the S did not own slaves. Only 0.11 percent owned more than 100. The Total Estate for those in the upper tail of the distribution was enormous. It should be emphasized that this is not a pocket-sized aristocracy; as a group, slave owners were sizeable and wealthy. Those with more than than 500 slaves were essentially millionaires in the current dollars of 1860. Some of these slaveowners were women.¹⁸

Soltow calculated the Full Manor for costless adult males at each of the interruption points in the distribution of slaves reported higher up. Soltow reports that the boilerplate Total Manor in the South in 1860 was $3,978, as compared to just $2,040 in the North.^nineteen Given that the average slave toll in 1860 was $800, if Southern wealth was exclusively slaves, that corporeality would equate to just over 5 slaves. Full Estate, notwithstanding, also includes existent manor, and Soltow reports that amount actually involves an average of 2 slaves. Thus, according to the table higher up, xc.07 pct of free adult males in the Due south owned fewer slaves than implied by average wealth. In 1860, the top one percent of wealth holders held 27 pct of Total Estates; the bottom 50 percent held but 1 per centum of the total.

In Figure 6 below, we run across how the distribution of Total Estate in the South compared to that in the North in 1860. The information once more come from Soltow's sampling. As ane can come across, at that place is nearly no difference between the North and the S at the top of the distribution. The Due north is slightly above the South at the 0.001 level, but they are even at the 0.01 level. The largest planters were as wealthy every bit the major Northern merchants and industrialists. Betwixt .01 and .10 levels, the South forges alee earlier the North begins to close the gap. In both areas, the bottom 50% of the wealth distribution held but 1% of measured wealth. The prove suggests that a Southern white farm family of four (a husband, married woman, and two children) who owned a slave family of four had more than wealth than a Northern white farm family of four that employed a couple of subcontract laborers. Non-slaveowners in the S were probably little different from Northern farmers. The aggregate share of the elevation 10% of the wealth distribution of Southern wealth is seven per centum points more than than the top 10% of the Northern distribution (75% vs. 68%).

Effigy 6

Wealth Distribution 1860
Northward vs. S

What is the comparable "value" of the wealth in slaves in today'south prices?

Of the ten "measures" adult by MeasuringWorth, two are useful for discussing the value of the wealth invested in slaves. They are relative earnings and relative output. We discussed the concept of relative earnings in relation to evaluating a slave's cost higher up, but it is also useful for discussing wealth, as people with high relative earnings are typically people of wealth.

Relative Output

The people who are the financial and political leaders of a community are often its most wealthy. Even if they take not been elected to power, the wealthy oft have disproportionate influence on those who do. Relative output measures the corporeality of income or wealth compared to the total output of the economic system. Those individuals with considerable income or wealth are more probable to be able to influence the limerick or full-amount of production in the economic system.

The relative output of a $400 slave in 1850 would be $3.4 million today. While this number seems very large, as we will evidence below, the wealth tied upwardly in slaves was a big proportion of the full wealth of the nation. Slave owners equally a group had considerable economic power. It is interesting to notation that the relative output of owning one slave was as high as $fourteen million in 1818. This finding is consistent with the history of the period when southern states exercised corking influence on such issues equally tariffs, banking, and in which new areas of the country slavery would be allowed.  As the century progressed, the political influence possessed by slave owners  declined because industrialization and agriculture in the North grew faster than the slave economy.

The Total Estates of slave owners were quite large, as is demonstrated when measured in electric current dollars. Tabular array 3 shows the relative earnings and relative output of their estates in 2020 dollars.

Table 3

Distribution of Total Estate among Slaveholders
Number of Slaves	Total Estate (thousands of 1860 Dollars)	Relative Earnings  (millions of 2020 $)	Relative Output  (millions of 2020 $)
>1000	NR	-	-
500 - 999	$         957	$        458	$     4,810
100 - 499	$         160	$          77	$        804
fifty - 999	$           72	$         34	$        361
ten - 49	$           17	$            8	$          85
5 - 10	$             ix	$            iv	$          45

Comparing these 2 tables, it becomes quite clear that the holder of ten slaves likely ranks in the top one percent of the distribution, if relative earnings is used as the standard of comparison. Potentially all slaveholders rank in the acme ane percent, if relative output is used as the standard of comparison. Clearly, the buying of even one slave unsaid that the owner was a wealthy fellow member of the community. Those who owned over 500 slaves had a measure out of relative output that compares to billionaires today.

How much wealth was invested in slaves?

Slaves had an important impact on the differences in regional wealth. Gavin Wright made estimates of both Northern and Southern wealth. His data for 1850 and 1860 are reported in  Table four beneath. The "value of slaves" figures are taken from Sutch and Ransom (1988).^xx

Table iv

	Regional Wealth in 1850 and 1860 Millions of dollars (except per capita)
	Northward	South	North	Due south
	1850	1850	1860	1860
Total Wealth	$four,474	$ii,844	$ix,786	$half-dozen,332
Value of Slaves		$1,286		$iii,059
Non-slave Wealth	$iv,474	$1,559	$9,786	$3,273
Wealth (gratuitous) per capita	$315	$483	$482	$868
Non-slave (free) Wealth per capita	$315	$174	$482	$294
Source Wright (2006), p. 60.

A significant proportion of the wealth of slave owners was eliminated by the stroke of Abraham Lincoln's pen when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation that freed slaves in the rebellious areas. Success on the battlefield ensured their freedom. Think that the Emancipation Annunciation freed slaves merely in areas in rebellion not all slaves. More fundamentally, it was success on the battlefield that eliminated this wealth. Total slave wealth was immense. Figure 7 shows the aggregate value of slaves adjusted to today's prices measured using the relative share of GDP. While it varies with the price of slaves over the period, it is never less than six trillion 2020 dollars and, at the time of Emancipation, was shut to 13 trillion 2020 dollars.

Effigy 7

Wealth in Slaves in Billions of 2020 dollars
Every bit Measured by the Share of the GDP

An alternative way of making that calculation is to apply Soltow's finding that Full Estate in slaves was 15.ix percent of the 1860 total.²¹ The Federal Reserve'south Flow of Funds accounts report net worth for households is about $121 trillion in 2020. If Soltow's percentage is applied to that data, the result is once again approximately $fourteen trillion. In case anyone recall that a relatively small number, it is roughly 77 percent of Gdp today.

If Wright's figures above are adjusted to today'south prices through the use of the relative share of Gross domestic product mensurate, they tell the same story as the Table 5 below shows.

Table 5

	Regional Wealth in 1850 and 1860 Billions of $2020 dollars
	North	S	North	South
	1850	1850	1860	1860
Total Wealth	$37,300	$23,700	$48,000	$31,000
Value of Slaves	-	$10,700	-	$fifteen,000
Non-slave Wealth	$37,300	$13,000	$48,000	$16,000

Information technology should exist noted that wealth grows roughly 30 per centum over the decade of the 1850s in both the N and South. However, in the South, the value of slaves grew about 40 percent over the decade, while not-slave wealth grew at only about 25 percentage.²² Some economic historians take hypothesized that Southerners had then much wealth tied up in slaves that they did not invest sufficiently in other types of investments. This is a concept called "crowding out." Whether that is the reason or not, it is clear at the outset of Civil War, the Northward had three times the corporeality of non-slave wealth as the S, and this discrepancy would be at least partly represented in factories and other capital that was an advantage in waging a war.

Conclusions

Slavery in the United States was an institution that had a big impact on the economic, political and social cloth on the country. This newspaper gives an idea of its economic magnitude in today's values. As noted in the introduction, they can be conservatively described as large.

Bibliography

Carter, Susan B., Scott Sigmund Gartner, Michael R. Haines, Alan L. Olmstead, Richard Sutch and Gavin Wright, editors, Historical Statistics of the United States: earliest times to the nowadays (New York: Cambridge University Printing, 2006).

Conrad, Alfred, and John Meyer. "The Economic science of Slavery in the Antebellum South." Periodical of Political Economy, vol. 66, no. 2, April 1958.

David, Paul, Herbert Gutman, Richard Sutch, Peter Temin, and Gavin Wright. Reckoning with Slavery: A Critical Written report in the Quantitative History of American Slavery. New York: Oxford University Printing, 1976.

Fogel, Robert William. "A Comparison betwixt the Value of Slave Uppercase in the Share of Total British Wealth (c.1811) and in the Share of Total Southern Wealth (c.1860)," chapter 56 of Robert William Fogel, Ralph A. Galantine, and Richard L. Manning, Without Consent or Contract: Show and Methods. New York: Norton, 1992.

Fogel, Robert William. Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery. New York: Due west. W. Norton, 1989.

Fogel, Robert William, and Stanley Engerman. Time on the Cross: The Economic science of American Negro Slavery, ii vols. Boston: Little, Brown, 1974.

Gray, Lewis Cecil, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860. Baltimore: Waverly Press, 1933, p. 566

Kotlikoff, Laurence J. "Quantitative Clarification of the New Orleans Slave Market, 1804 to 1862," chapter 3 of Robert William Fogel and Stanley 50. Engerman, Without Consent or Contract: Markets and Production: Technical Papers, Volume 1 (New York: Norton, 1992), reprinted from Economic Inquiry, vol. 17, no. four, October 1979.

Jones-Rogers, Stephanie, They Were Her Holding: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South. New Oasis, Yale University Printing, 2019

Officer, Lawrence H. and Samuel H. Williamson "What Was the Value of the US Consumer Bundle Then?" MeasuringWorth, 2021. URL: http://www.measuringworth.org/consumer/

Officeholder, Lawrence H. and Samuel H. Williamson "The Annual Consumer Toll Index for the Us, 1774-Present," MeasuringWorth, 2020 URL: http://www.measuringworth.org/uscpi/

Olmstead, Alan, and Paul Rhode, Creating Abundance: Biological Innovation and American Agricultural Development. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Ransom, Roger and Richard Sutch, "Capitalists without Capital: The Burden of Slavery and the Impact of Emancipation," Agricultural History 62 (3) (1988)

Soltow, Lee, Men and Wealth in the United States 1850-1870 (New Haven: Yale Academy Press, 1975).

Williamson, Samuel H. and Louis Cain "Measures of Worth," MeasuringWorth, 2021. URL http://www.measuringworth.com/defining_measures_of_worth.php

Wright, Gavin. Slavery and American Economic Development. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Academy Press, 2006.

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* The authors give thanks Stanley Engerman, Richard Sutch, Robert Whaples and Gavin Wright for their comments on a previous drafts. The Previous versions:
Measuring Slavery in 2009 Dollars
Measuring Slavery in 2016 Dollars
Dorsum to text

ⁱ It is not articulate when slavery became an organized organization for labor in the colonies, but there is evidence that enslaved people were hither from the offset. There is besides evidence that slaves purchased in Virginia in the early 1600s were treated in a manner similar to indentured servants (i.east., they were given their freedom and some land subsequently a catamenia of years.) The following quote is from Tim Hashaw, the author of The Birth of Black America: The First African Americans and the Pursuit of Freedom in Jamestown (Carroll & Graf)
"The Africans who arrived in Jamestown in 1619 did so past run a risk. In Angola more than 300 of them had been packed aboard the San Juan Bautista, jump for Mexico. As the Spanish slaver entered the Gulf of Mexico, two English language privateers, the White Lion and the Treasurer, gear up upon it. The pirates hoped they'd corralled a treasure ship. Discovering only human cargo, they took as many slaves as they could carry. The Earl of Warwick, a British aristocrat, owned the Treasurer, and the governor of Jamestown was the Earl'south human, so the privateers carried their booty to the Virginia declension. In that location they sold about 30 slaves, roughly split betwixt males and females, to five or six plantation owners."
See http://www.chron.com/life/books/commodity/Book-discusses-African- slaves-their-struggle-for-1635362.php
Back to text

² Susan B. Carter, Scott Sigmund Gartner, Michael R. Haines, Alan Fifty. Olmstead, Richard Sutch and Gavin Wright, editors, Historical Statistics of the United States: earliest times to the present (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), series Bb212.
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³ Betwixt 1804 and 1862, 135,000 slaves were sold on the New Orleans market. Kotlikoff, "Quantitative Description of the New Orleans Slave Marketplace, 1804 to 1862" (1979)
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⁴ These costs are an obligation of the slave owner fifty-fifty when the slave is too young, quondam or infirm to work. There is ample evidence that these slaves who were not productive did not receive as much food as the able bodied, but at that place is no evidence that they were immune to starve.
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^five See Robert William Fogel, Without Consent or Contract: The Ascent and Autumn of American Slavery (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), Affiliate 3.
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⁶ Nowadays value is the value today of a series of payments, or a single payment, that volition be received in the future. Money put in a banking company or alternative investment today volition abound over time depending on the interest charge per unit. What is received in the future is principle plus interest. Nowadays value calculations determine the amount of principle that is needed today in order to realize a given serial of payments in the future.
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⁷ The main reason that New South Slaves had higher prices was that the soil was more fertile there, so plantations were more productive. Run into Alan Olmstead and Paul Rhode, Creating Affluence: Biological Innovation and American AgriculturalDevelopment (New York: Cambridge University Printing, 2008).
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⁸ See Fogel, op. cit., pp. 69-lxx.
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^ix Of form, the number had dissimilar meaning to the slave. However, as in that location were cases where slaves bought their own freedom, the opportunity cost question is the same.
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¹⁰ Lawrence H. Officer and Samuel H. Williamson, "Measures of Worth," MeasuringWorth, 2008. URL: http://world wide web.measuringworth.com/worthmeasures.html
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^eleven A 4th measure, relative output, is used in our discussion of the magnitude of the wealth represented by the ownership of slaves.
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¹² In his famous history of Agriculture in the Southern United states to 1860(Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution, 1933), Gray writes "Planters preferred to employ their own slaves rather than rent them to others. Considering of the scarcity of efficient white labor, demand for Negro artisans was usually considerable, and good wages were offered for their services. Unskilled labor was in demand for lumbering, mining, the constructions of canals and railways, steamboating, dock labor, and other 'public works.'" p. 566
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^xiii Lewis Gray, op. cit , p. 566
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^fourteen Given that Gdp for 2020 reflects the curt-lived, pandemic-acquired recession, for the calculations in this paper we utilize the 1st quarter judge of GDP for 2021 as better reflecting the long-term trend. Nominal Gross domestic product fell roughly 2.3% in 2020; the 1st quarter estimate for 2021 is 2.9% greater than that for 2019.
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^xv Encounter Lawrence Officer, "What Was the Value of the US Consumer Bundle So?" MeasuringWorth, 2009a,and Offficer, "The Annual Consumer Cost Index for the United states, 1774-Present," MeasuringWorth, 2009b.
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^xvi Today the share of nutrient and beverages of the average household is fifteen% and most of the cost of housing is to maintain a residence that is owned.
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¹⁷ Lee Soltow, Men and Wealth in the United states of america 1850-1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975).
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¹⁸ See Jones-Rogers, Stephanie, They Were Her Belongings: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South(New Oasis, Yale University Press, 2019)
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^xix Soltow, op. cit., p. 181.
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^xx That amount of wealth in slaves was calculated by Roger Ransom and Richard Sutch every bit the product of a iii-yr moving average of slave prices and the size of the slave population.
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²¹ Most economic historians feel the slave prices in 1860 were artificially loftier for a diversity of reasons and that even without the War, they would have fallen, so these comparisons of wealth somewhat overstate the wealth of the South at the time.
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²² The percent figure was calculated past Fogel from Soltow: Robert W. Fogel, "A Comparison between the Value of Slave Capital letter in the Share of Total British Wealth (c.1811) and in the Share of Total Southern Wealth (c.1860)," chapter 56 of Robert William Fogel, Ralph A. Galantine, and Richard L. Manning, Without Consent or Contract: Bear witness and Methods (New York: Norton, 1992.
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