How important was slavery to the rise of US as an economic power?

The economics of slavery were probably detrimental to the rise of US manufacturing and almost certainly toxic to the economy of the South

The 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first African slaves in what was to become America has reopened an old debate: How important was slavery to the rise of the US as an economic power?

One school of thought argues that slavery in general, and cotton in particular, was the driving force behind the development of America’s distinctive brand of capitalism. (The New York Times’s ambitious 1619 Project contains a good encapsulation of this argument.) But not only has this theory come under fire for inaccuracies, its central narrative is incorrect.

The reality is that cotton played a relatively small role