What effect did slavery have on US development as a nation?

[TruthMeister]

Where would the US be today without free labor back in the hand-picked cotton days? Would we be as technologically advanced? Would civil rights legislation have even been contemplated?

[Daniel]

Without african americans in america, we may have failed as a nation. We definitely wouldn't be the superpower that we are now, and people would not regard us as the land of opportunity.

[Shamara]

The use of slave labor, was a coerced, cash-crop system of labor from which slavery became an economic necessity because for a person who owned land they needed workers, and these workers were predominantly Negro slaves brought from Africa. To southern colonists, slavery was first an economic institution solely for the purpose of solving an economic problem, that problem - work cost too much money so the colonists implemented forced labor for economic gain. So slavery provided the basis for a special Southern economic and social life which had continued on until the Civil war. This system allowed the slave owners and the country as a whole to profit off the backs and lives of African Americans.The first African slaves hit the shores of the United States in 1619 and were constantly imported into the US until 1860 even though importation had been outlawed in 1808. Over those intervening 246 years they contributed more than 605 billion hours of free labor, which funded the Industrial Revolution, financed most of the fortune 500 companies, helped finance two World Wars, and left a negative sociological impact on an entire race of people. Following the thread of these dollars would be another interesting aspect of black economic research since even without detailed research it is known that Aetna Insurance Co., E.I. Dupont, and J.P. Morgan, Brown University, to name a very, very few, reaped substantial benefits from the grim business of slavery.Another way to view the economic contribution of slavery to the US economy would be to assume that only 5% of the value of the slave labor was invested in the stock market in the year the labor was accrued. Five percent was chosen since this is the most common bottom line that is found in Fortune 500 income statements. Using market growth data provided by the Rittenhouse Trust data and the moneys are accumulated from 1700 through 1830 (the beginning of the Rittenhouse data), yields a value of $6.42 trillion current dollars. The subsequent moneys are invested at the time they accrued yields an additional $1.44 trillion.


The results of the economic value of this free labor are, when inflated conservatively at 3%

to 2006 dollars, a staggering value of 20.3 trillion dollars or to put this number in a more

visual perspective; it amounts to $563,450 per African American currently living in the US.