“Slavery, that was a kind of alchemy for such White folk, or so they reckoned. They calculated a way of turning each bead of a Black man’s sweat into gold and each moan of despair from a Black woman’s throat into the sweet clear sound of a silver coin ringing on the money-changer’s table. There was buying and selling of souls in that place. Yet there was nary a one of them who understood the whole price they paid for owning other folk.”

—  Orson Scott Card

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 1.

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Orson Scott Card586
American science fiction novelist 1951

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