Historian baptist combed over thousands of accounting books kept by cotton planters. What he found astonished him, the rapidly improving productivity of those workers decade by decade. Ed high lights an account by a man named henry clay, who endured slavery and later told of a brutal device. He claimed that after he was sold in the domestic slave trade, moved from north carolina, where he was born, to louisiaa. But i think he was also using it as a metaphor to talk about the ways in which, increasingly, enslavers a measured how much enslave people were picking.
In the decades after America’s founding and the establishment of the Constitution, did the nation get better, more just, more democratic? Or did it double down on violent conquest and exploitation?
Reported, produced, written, and mixed by John Biewen, with series collaborator Chenjerai Kumanyika. The series editor is Loretta Williams. Interviews with Robin Alario, Edward Baptist, Kidada Williams, and Keri Leigh Merritt.
Music by Algiers, John Erik Kaada, Eric Neveux, and Lucas Biewen. Music consulting and production help from Joe Augustine of Narrative Music.