re: #158 Jay C

I read somewhere once, that at a conservative estimate, the capital tied up in human slaves in the antebellum South was something like $2.5Billion - at contemporary dollar values: in an era when $1000/year was a decent skilled-artisan’s annual salary.
(Something like 2-1/2 million (?) slaves conservatively representing an investment of about $1000 or so each in the 1850s)

I believe I read that chattel slaves represented more wealth pre-war than everything else in the US combined.