Enslaved people’s value exceeded all US railroads and factories combined

Evidence

At the time of the Civil War, the value of the enslaved human beings held as property added up to more than all of this nation’s railroads and factories combined. And yet, enslaved people saw not a dime of this wealth. They owned nothing and were owed nothing from all that had been built from their toil. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1334

Categorization

• SEED: A striking quantitative anchor for any essay on American wealth origins — the enslaved were the single largest asset class in antebellum America.