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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Agback" data-source="post: 1380264" data-attributes="member: 5328">Actually the price of slaves in the Antebellum South rose enormously after the international community cut off the Atlantic slave trade. In 1792 the average price of a prime field hand was $300, In 1808 (when the slave trade was suppressed) it jumped to $600. Over the next fifty-odd years it rose steadily to $1200. There was some inflation in that time, but not much: most of this is a real price increse of a factor nearly of four.At 1860 the wage of unskilled labour was $1.14 per day (average over the whole USA), but only 77 cents per day in (slave-owning) North Carolina. Thus the peak price of slaves (under conditions where importation had been cut off for fifty years) was about 1,558 day's wages, or the equivalent of 156 gp for a labourer in D&D.While Googling for the information above I came across the following statement about relative prices, which may be of some interest: "There was always a great difference between the values of individual slaves. When the average price of negroes ranged about $500, prime field hands brought, say, $1,000, and skilled artisans still more. At that rate, an infant would be valued at about $100, a boy of twelve years and a man of fifty at about $500 each, and a prime wench for field work at $800 or $900."There is lots of good information at <a href="http://www.multiracial.com/readers/tenzer4.html" target="_blank">this site</a>.Regards,Agback</blockquote>

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