I'm continually surprised at the quality of southern slavery-apologist criticism of economic theories about free markets and labor. EG here's George Fitzhugh on Adam Smith:

"He saw only that prosperous and progressive portion of society whom liberty or free competition benefitted, and mistook its effects on them for its effects on the world."

There are a lot of books like this from the time that combine really incisive criticism of claims that free laborers were actually free with utterly psychopathic defenses of the most brutal form of slavery the world has ever known. Here's the source:

https://archive.org/details/sociologyforsout00fitz/mode/1up

#Slavery #ChattelSlavery #GeorgeFitzhugh #SociologyForTheSouth #AdamSmith #FreeLabor