On the record
It is also a matter of notoriety, that the price of slaves has been and still is such as to confine their possession almost exclusively to the rich.
Said by
Lewis Tappan
Source
gutenberg.orgLewis Tappan: “It is also a matter of notoriety, that the price of slaves has been and still is such as to confine their possession…”
Editor's note · Context
Tappan highlights the economic barriers that prevent poor individuals from owning slaves, reinforcing the class divide in the South.
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More from Lewis Tappan
Statesmen may differ about policy, or the means to be employed in the promotion of the public good, but surely they ought to be agreed as to what prosperity means.
Education elevates the inferior classes of society, teaches them their rights, and points out the means of enforcing them.
Slavery moreover is monopolizing in its tendency, and leads to the accumulation of property in few hands.
You are told, much of the wealth is invested in negroes--yet it obviously is a wealth that impoverishes; and no stronger evidence of the truth of this assertion is needed, than the comparative price of land in the free and slave States.