The history of slavery in Missouri began in 1720, when a man named Philippe Francois Renault brought about 500 negro slaves from Santo Domingo to work in lead mines in the River des Peres area, located in the present-day St. Louis and Jefferson counties.
The institution only became prominent in the area following two major events: the Louisiana Purchase (1803) and the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney (1793). This led to a mass movement of slave-owning proprietors to the area of present-day Missouri and Arkansas, then known as Upper Louisiana. However, the spread of major cotton growth was limited to the more southerly area, near the border with present-day Arkansas. Instead, slavery in the other areas of Missouri was concentrated into other major crops, such as tobacco, hemp, grain and livestock. A number of slaves were hired out as stevedores, cabin boys, or deck hands for the ferries of the Mississippi River.
The majority of slaveowners in Missouri came from the worn-out agricultural lands of North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia/West Virginia. By 1860, only 36 counties in Missouri had 1,000 or more slaves; top male slaves fetched a price of $1,300 ($33,627 as of 2013), and top female slaves fetched around $1,000 ($25,867 as of 2013). The value of all the slaves in Missouri was estimated by the State Auditor's 1860 report at around US$44,181,912 ($1,142,838,790 as of 2013).
Read more about History Of Slavery In Missouri: Slave Codes, Abolitionism
Famous quotes containing the words history of, history, slavery and/or missouri:
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The traveller on the prarie is naturally a hunter, on the head waters of the Missouri and Columbia a trapper, and at the Falls of St. Mary a fisherman.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)