This country was built on slave labor.

This is from March, 2007:

A student wrote:

I am not sure what you mean by "this country was built on slave labor."  Are you telling me that this country would not have existed had it not been for slaves?  I do not know where you are getting your information. 

I replied:

To say that this country was built on slave labor is NOT to say that without slave labor this country would not have existed. (Although that might well be true.)

To say that you got to work on the bus this morning is not to say that, had there been no buses, you would not have gotten to work. (Drive your car; take a cab; bike; walk; carpool; hitch-hike.)

However, it is in fact highly probable that, had it not been for the availability of slave labor, this country would neither have quite started nor developed as it did. (It probably would have been built very differently. And be very different now.)

To an important extent, the development of the industrial North was based on the wealth generated in the South by the plantation system. The agricultural wealth created by Southern cotton was utterly dependent upon the cheap labor of the slaves. Without slavery, it would very likely have been impossible for the vast productivity of the South in growing cotton to have existed. Thus, the financing of both the new industry of the American North and the cotton mills of newly industrializing Great Britain would simply not have been available.(I’ve read this claimed by an economic historian, but I have not thoroughly studied and confirmed his argument for myself.) As a result, the world as we know it —not just in America, but everywhere in the world significantly affected by the industrialization of American and Europe— would very (very, very) likely not exist!!

Without slave labor in the South —this is informed speculation!-- America might well not have had the powerful pull factors of available work and location for immigrant ethnic communities in the cities. Thus, the only immigrants who could come would be ones who could survive in the wilderness. That, of course, happened in the early years and continued as the West was settled. But that kind of immigration would not have created such a populous and wealthy new nation. Agricultural societies have been typically extremely hierarchical, monarchies usually. If America had not urbanized and industrialized, which was largely (it has been claimed) financed by the slave labor of the South, it likely would not have had a successful revolution against the British and likely would not be a Democracy today.

. . . This is all hypothetical. None of this —since it is a counterfactual argument (what would have happened if such-and-such had been different)-- can be proven. But it is likely that American democracy only exists today because of the enslavement of Africans.