![]() ![]() ![]() This continued during the war, and there was a large expansion of slavery into Texas, which had been made a state in 1845. Before the start of the war, the expansion of slavery was an important political and economic goal for slaveholders. In 1863, enslaved people in Richmond sold for $4,000 or $5,000 and in Texas for $2,500 to $3,500, depending on skill sets. In 1860, the average enslaved person sold in Virginia brought $1,500, and a "prime field hand" in New Orleans brought $1,800. The prices of people held in slavery rose and fell in part with the prospects for Confederate victory. ![]() Although the price of enslaved workers grew, it did not keep up with inflation, causing the real price of enslaved people to decline during the Civil War. The market for buying and selling enslaved people continued during the war, as did the market for hiring and hiring out enslaved labor. Slaves for sale, a scene in New Orleans, 1861. During the war, this disparity grew, leading to fear of insurrection and calls for militia companies to be stationed in agricultural regions to guarantee peace. Even before the war, in the rice regions of Georgia and South Carolina and in parts of the Mississippi Delta there were ten or even twenty enslaved black people for every white person. Southern agriculture was more lucrative than Northern, focusing on crops of rice, cotton, and sugar. Most of the South's enslaved workers were enslaved by planters (often defined as those who enslaved twenty or more people), although yeomen farmers outnumbered the fewer than 50,000 planters. In 1860, 1.6% of US citizens owned slaves. There have been many different ways to estimate the amount of slaveholding in the South. Main article: Slavery in the United States Percentage of slaves in each county of the slave states in 1860 ![]()
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