Slavery All the Way Down

Allen C. Guelzo reviews The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, by Edward E. Baptist, at Claremont Review of Books.

"'Enslaved African Americans were the world’s most efficient producers of cotton'—not because of any invisible hand, but because of the all-too-visible whip, which 'was as important to making cotton grow as sunshine and rain.'"