Though slaves are said to be property, they are the preventers, the wasters, the antagonists of property.
Editor's note · Context
Mann argues that slaves, while considered property, actually hinder economic progress.
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He that chooses to employ a sort of labor that yields only half as much to the hand as another sort would yield, makes a choice that is not only unprofitable, but deeply injurious to his interest.
Not the most fertile soil, not mines of silver and gold, can make a nation rich, without intelligence.
Cast it off, West Virginians, whilst yet you have the power; for if you let it descend unbroken to your children, it will have grown to a mountain of misery upon their heads.
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.





