On the record
Out of five hundred and seventy-two patents issued in 1847, only sixty-six went to the slave states.
Source
gutenberg.orgEditor's note · Context
Mann highlights the disparity in patent issuance between slave states and free states to argue against slavery's impact on innovation.
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No man of common sense, who has observed this result, can doubt for a moment that the system of free labor promotes the growth and prosperity of states in a much higher degree than the system of slave labor.
Packed and stowed like merchandise between unventilated decks, so close that the tempest without could not ruffle the pestilential air within, the voyage was begun.
Behind these forty-one indictments for stealing stand drawn up, in battle array, against this same prisoner, seventy-four other indictments for transporting the very slaves whom he is charged to have stolen.
So far as legal rights against his oppressors are concerned, the slave lives in such a world of darkness.
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