This seemed to be a common trend throughout most of history, not just US history. For slave traders, wouldn’t it have been far more profitable for the children of slaves to be born free, forcing slave owners to have to buy more slaves?
I get why slaves reproducing is good for the owner, because they have an infinite labor source, but it feels bad for everyone else involved in the trade?
In a more US centric focused bonus question, with the 1790 Naturalization Act, why wouldn’t slaves born on US soil be considered citizens and be free? Technically they weren’t bought so they wouldn’t be property according to slave owners so why was it considered the owner’s right to own child slaves born on US soil?
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1) Humans reproduce relatively slowly. Best case scenario it takes roughly a year, and then several years after that before you can create a new human that’s capable of labor. So if you’re trying to expand (which is kind of the whole point of capitalism), just having your slaves breed isn’t very efficient in terms of growing your labor force.
2) Slaves weren’t seen as people. Not only did white (Southern) Americans not want them to be free, having a bunch of free Black people running around would have caused a lot of problems for them. A lot of slaves would have started asking the question “If they’re free, why am I not?” which would have made it harder for slave owners to keep control of their slaves.
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