Also should have said indentured “servants” for whatever difference there was===I think they couldn’t be beaten to death and that was about it?

My own remembered grammar school history was that there was slavery all over the place. American Indians would sit and die rather than work, so African were brought in who would work as well as white indentured slaves who had no other way to pay for their passage. Pretty slim? Still left me with the “attitude” that capital/labor had some serious issues. And that remains true today.

“All men are created equal”==I wonder how many and to what degree the founders understood that to be aspirational? Not being sarcastic at all, serious questions. They “knew” it wasn’t true and wasn’t going to be true for years, so what were they thinking?

Nice review of the law/history.

I would point out, though, that far more children learn the basics of this history in U.S. schools than used to be the case. For instance, when I speak with audiences in this country, most adults say that they are surprised to learn the extent of northern involvement in slavery and the slave trade. Many teenagers and college-age young people, on the other hand, say that they learned this in school. So I believe that our challenge today is as much to educate adults as schoolchildren.

I can’t agree with you that there is no purpose in state legislation mandating disclosure of corporate records on slavery.

While it’s true that university researchers can arrange to gain access to some corporate records, many companies have no interest in opening their archives to outside scholars wishing to explore their historic connections to slavery. If we wish to expand our knowledge of the details and extent of slavery and slavery-related businesses in our history, we do need to explore historical records held by governments, organizations, private individuals, and corporations alike.