The Stolen Wealth of Slavery by David Montero & Michael Eric Dyson
Author:David Montero & Michael Eric Dyson [Montero, David and Dyson, Michael Eric & Dyson, Michael Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2024-02-06T00:00:00+00:00
OceanofPDF.com
CHAPTER 9
THE MERCHANTSâ DOME
The Merchantsâ Exchange Building sat on a stretch of Wall Street between William and Hanover, a solid block of blue granite, with a dome that soared more than 120 feet in the air, and a portico of eighteen massive Ionic columns. Inside, its rotunda was vast enough to hold three thousand people, which is to say, three thousand of the cityâs most elite white men. The original building had burned down in the great fire that swept New York in 1835, auguring the calamity on Wall Street that came soon afterward. Like the fortunes of the cotton kings, the Merchantsâ Exchange had been rebuilt by 1843, âthe most splendid public edifice in the city.â1 By 1850, it had resumed its place as the nationâs central temple of commerce, a gathering hall for its leading financiers and entrepreneursâparticularly its slavery entrepreneurs. They were among those who, with money from their reviled business, built this shrine to their own glory, at a cost of $1.5 million ($45 million today).2
Each day, these men congregated in the vast rotunda at two oâclock, a swirl of black hats and silk vests, a visual concentration of the nationâs slavery affluence and power, indulging in further speculations and schemes. Thousands of corporations were represented under the dome. Among the throng were members of the boards of Aetna Insurance and Nautilus Insurance, writing policies on the lives of enslaved people, paying premiums on Black men killed in mines; along with dozens of directors of Fulton Bank, the Mechanics Bank, and City Bank of New York, their vaults heavy, and growing, from transacting the business of southern plantations, the so-called Southern trade. Also congregating there were the heads of the nationâs shipping industry, presidents of the thriving Liverpool lines.
There had been no cotton ships of which to speak when Benjamin Marshall had arrived in this harbor half a century earlier. Now, outside the rotunda, just steps away, such ships crowded the piers of the East River abutting Wall Street, in historically greater numbers than ever; up the Hudson River, as well, they clogged the waterfront in chaotic lines, âa forest of masts,â wrote one observer, âextending far toward Harlem on either side of the town.â3 The ships carried the sugar harvests of James Brown to the city, and officers at Brown Brothers & Co. could be found almost every day at the Exchange, arranging shipments and extending credit lines. The ships carried also the plantation yields of Stephen Duncan, Francis Surget, and other Mississippi Nabobs. Charles Leverich, their banker at the Bank of New York, then carefully orchestrated the proceeds through the stock exchange.
Under the dome of the Merchantsâ Exchange, these men constituted the corporate body of America, indeed, the earliest manifestation of corporate America itself. With untold riches from Black peopleâs enslavement, they were creating more corporations than had ever existed in the country, or anywhere else in the world. And within the dizzying emporium of their business activities, lurking behind its illustrious facade, the
Download
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.
Nudge - Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Thaler Sunstein(6643)
iGen by Jean M. Twenge(4705)
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin(4351)
Adulting by Kelly Williams Brown(3681)
The Sports Rules Book by Human Kinetics(3597)
The Hacking of the American Mind by Robert H. Lustig(3588)
The Ethical Slut by Janet W. Hardy(3512)
Captivate by Vanessa Van Edwards(3306)
Mummy Knew by Lisa James(3174)
In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson(2953)
The Worm at the Core by Sheldon Solomon(2928)
Ants Among Elephants by Sujatha Gidla(2928)
Suicide: A Study in Sociology by Emile Durkheim(2615)
The Slow Fix: Solve Problems, Work Smarter, and Live Better In a World Addicted to Speed by Carl Honore(2578)
Humans of New York by Brandon Stanton(2382)
Handbook of Forensic Sociology and Psychology by Stephen J. Morewitz & Mark L. Goldstein(2380)
Blackwell Companion to Sociology, The by Judith R. Blau(2320)
The Happy Hooker by Xaviera Hollander(2276)
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell(2263)