Empowered by Slavery: A History of Political Power and Slavery in Early America

Empowered by Slavery examines how the institution of slavery was an integral part of early America's culture and civilization. It describes the power dynamics within antebellum America that permitted the use of African American slave labor to be ruthlessly exploited by America's political, military, and industrial leaders prior to the Civil War. Seven specific slave plantations are examined in this book, along with the plantation owners, as examples of the exploitative system that made a small number of white men extraordinarily wealthy.