Owners saw their slaves in terms of capital investments. In this mindset, enslavers saw an opportunity to “transform control over enslaved people’s bodies into authority over their own credit” (245). The C.A.P.L, or Consolidated Association of the Planters of Louisiana, was put into action by politician-entrepreneurs Edmund Forstall and Hughes Lavergne, who chartered the company in 1827, which allowed planters to mortgage their slaves and buy stock in the C.A.P.L. (245). By owning stock in the company, these planters were allowed to borrow bank notes “of up to half the value of the mortgaged property” (246). These slave holders were then able to use this money to re-invest in their own plantations, such as buying more slaves, a cotton gin, etc., which furthered the cotton industry. But how did the C.A.P.L. essentially securitize these mortgages from the planters? The C.A.P.L. sold bonds “on the financial …show more content…
With the advance of technology, and available land in the south, cotton became “king,” and hundreds of slave hands were relocated to the south. Slave-picked cotton became the “dominant driver of U.S. economic growth” (82). New Orleans had actually become the “pivot of economic expansion [and the] point of union between Europe and America” (83). Not only was slave-labor responsible for the early boom of the U.S. economy, but it established trading partners and investors overseas, making it an international business. The securitization of credit was formed to help slave-holders, and capitalize on the market created by the slave-system. Therefore, the financial history of modern capitalism is intertwined with slavery, for the original investors used slaves as mortgages to build their wealth and empires. Thus, one may see that the booming American capitalism was essentially built from slave-labor, and a