You omitted another highly pernicious effect of slavery. Jefferson summed it up when he grimly observed, “For in a warm climate, no man will labor for himself when he can make another man labor for him.”
The really bitter irony in this is, slavery seems to have done more harm to the ‘work ethic’ of ‘whites’ than that of people of color. However, the ‘whites’ — and the higher you go up the economic scale, the truer this is of ‘whites’ — project their own desire to sit under magnolia trees and sip mint JEEWLIPS on the working poor AND ALL people of color! And those are the people who know, almost instinctively, that everyone needs some form of regular work even if they can afford not to be paid, at least for a time, for our own good mental and emotional health! Not ‘in business for our health’, are we? Think again, boys and girls! To quote a character from one of my favorite novels, The Song of David Freed, “Is no good have too much time. Must have work.”
Or were the planters just more mentally exhausted by having to be such brutes and always having the spectre of slave revolt not overly far down in their minds? I’d appreciate your feedback on this.