In Frederick Douglass’ Narrative, he describes being struck by the poverty of the northern people that he met upon his arrival in Newport. His conclusion was that without slavery as he had known in the south, there can be no wealth.

In the modern world where half of the wealth is owned by 0.1% of the population, where 3 billion live in poverty, where a single country siphons away the resources from most of the third world countries, and where the predominant economic model keeps the masses in a perpetual state of wage dependence and debt peonage, the injustices of slavery persist.