“In particular, three slaveowning politicians loom large in our narrative as principal enablers of the territorial expansion of slavery and, consequently, of the slave-breeding industry: Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and James K. Polk – a Virginian and two Tennesseans. All three were slaveholders, and like all slaveholders, their wealth was primarily stored in the form of captive human beings, so their entire financial base – personal, familial, social, and political – depended on.”
