If you were enslaved and treated the same as these people were, would you consider yourself to have been kidnapped? I suspect you would.
If you didn’t work fast enough and were flogged to “encourage” you, would you consider that torture?
If your wife, also enslaved, was forced to endure the sexual advances of the master, would you consider it rape?
You know, lots of white men and women in the 18th and 19th centuries were subjected to exactly such treatment when enslaved by Muslim.? Do you consider their treatment to have been justified because they were worth a lot of money?
BTW, thanks for recognizing the great financial value of a slave, as it shows why the South was (logically enough) willing to go to war over a threat to their capital investment.
Let’s use your numbers. 4,000,000 human beings x $100,000 - $400,000,000,000. That’s getting up into territory where it would actually show up in the federal budget.
Actually, I suspect it’s high, but half that number is probably reasonably close.
Slave catchers would also kidnap white men and women, and could find friendly or corrupt judges to create papers consigning captured persons to perpetual slavery.
Arlington was known for having many white slaves.
Uh,..:
The Emancipation Proclamation was not a universal declaration. It detailed where slaves were freed, only in those states “in rebellion against the United States.” Slaves remained slaves in states not in rebellion – such as Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware. The hypocrisy of the Emancipation Proclamation came in for heavy criticism. Lincoln’s own secretary of state, William Seward, said, “We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.”
http://lewrockwell.com/williams-w/w-williams157.html