I love this idea of white math and the cost it implies, the missed opportunity costs to black Americans, probably in the trillions. But I am beginning to question this idea that the “system” was dismantled. Was it? The system of chattel slavery was uniquely a British invention, born in the colonial British laws, with the Virginia book of law of 1705 as a prime example. That book of law, approved by the Monarch/autocrat as as British law were established chattel slavery as a new legal institute separate from indentured servitude that came before it, where black enslaved workers could, and many did, earn their freedom up to Bacon’s Rebellion. That was the primary reason for the massive change in how slavery was practiced and how it was confined to a new legal set of rules that created permanent servitude for black African slaves in the British colonies but kept the white system of servitude the same, or even made it better. That system of new chattel laws were not in Louisiana until 1803 when America took it over, and thus there were ten of thousands of freed ‘creoles’ (a term much like mulatto, but mulatto had legal meaning and restrictions in the Virginia book of Laws, which served as a model for other British colonies in principles shaped into slightly different language according to the colony).
The point is that this system of chattel slavery was unique at the time to British American colonies that became states when American was founded. Northern states nullified the British system of laws, as states were set up as a confederate system and declared their own government structure and independence after July 4 1776. Those set of principles of natural inalienable rights were applied by each state separately as America was only a “union” of independent states around a unicameral structure. Hence we find Vermont abolish slavery in 1777 when it writes and ratifies its own state constitution, which explicitly act to cancel the British system of laws, and any chattel slavery that colony may have had,. Pennsylvania and Massachusetts were next to enact state constitutions, eliminating slavery. By 1787 most northern states had either done so, or committed to doing so. But not in the South, they resisted. Hence the chattel slavery we see there reflects the British laws established under the King. These states were forced at gunpoint in 1865 to establishing new state constitutions based on the US constitution as a condition for being part of America. They did so, though some resisted.
Essentially, the principles of democracy were not established out of free will of the whites confederates but as terms of surrender. The principles of inalienable rights were not proudly adopted like in Vermont or Massachusetts from an internal sense of pride, but from external force based on defeat. White Southerners were not happy whatsoever. Plantation owners got pardoned by President Johnson. But Johnson, reportedly spiritual head of the klan (see my article on that issue based on factual testimony in a criminal trial in North Carolina), not only worked a deal to give them their status back, but welcomed them all back to Democratic Party which he headed (they were part of his party before the war with two presidents from that conservative party where the Southern MAGA conservative wing of white pro-slavers resided).
Forced principles never stick and are thoroughly resent by the white rich oligarchs. But they did have a new legal American—not British—weapon at their disposal: the allowance to enslave embedded now in the American constitution from the passage of the 13th amendment. “Slavery” appears for the first time in the American legal structure, giving authorities in states the allowance to enslave human when “duly convicted” of a felony. Duly means some formality has to be made. The Southerns whiters cleverly figure out that if they passed vagrancy laws, they could have sheriffs arrest freed black Americans for standing around, for not working, etc. Those were trivial events, but the way those laws were constructed allowed sheriffs to easily interpret the conditions of making an arrest and the justice who convicted the arrest black Americans as felons under these laws. Once felons, the black Americans were now technically enslaved. They could have arrested whites, but that’s not they interpreted the law but white rented out chain gangs would have led to instant insurrection and that was not how slavery was practiced under the British, so there were no expectation of that.
That’s how American constitutional slavery came to be, and as a direct result, as long as poor black Americans were continually arrested, they could be slaves. The picking of cotton now could resume, doubling from the end of the Civil War when it almost ceased., with the help of legalized slavery through the allowance of the 13th and through “sharecropping,” legal contracts made by white planters to buy all the cotton from black poor farmers kept in poverty by these contracts and other “Jim crow” neoslavery restrictions. Cotton was only picked by hands, black American hands, and reached an all time high in 1914, but stayed pretty high until the 1950s, when the John Deere combine finally came along and wiped out the need for black hands to pick cotton completely by 1970. Which is why we now find legalized slavery under the 13th in jails, as production or manufacturing facilities are hidden in jails, many private. In those jails, wages are either non-existent or low, 1 dollar a day.
I found just a couple weeks ago the website EndtheException dot com and have seen videos of people testifying about the legalized form of American slavery allowable under the 13th. You say chattel slavery system is over, and technically that is true, but it was technically the British chattel slavery system constructed under British laws in Southern colonies that ended as a result of surrender. The legalized system of American slavery it looks like didn’t start until 1865. There could be some other websites and movements like that one, which has many organizational sponsors. It is outrageous as per this website evidence that legalized slavery is allowed today as it was since the end of that war. Seeing black American inmates make glasses and print business cards at Nash Correctional facility in the manufacturing plants inside that mid-level security prison is distressing for me to see. They are real slaves, paid a dollar a day so perhaps technically indentured servants—you’ll have to read the 13th to decide for yourself or contact the makers of this end the exception website and consult with them. In the meantime, I’ll remain increasingly distressed the 13th amendment is amendment to wipe out this allowance of slavery. You think given US history every black American (and now brown Americans) would be deeply offended and demand it stop now, right now.