Slaves made this place possible. They made bricks from Mississippi River mud to build the mansion, while they lived in pitiful shacks. And year after year they grew the sugarcane in sweltering fields. All we know above most of them is their name, recorded in ledgers. They were property, one rung above livestock.

Without the Civil War, it's possible slavery could have endured another century. Mechanical sugarcane harvesters were demonstrated around 1930, but didn't become universal until around 1960. One machine replaced 150 field hands, and slavery here would then have been economically unfeasible. Mechanical cotton harvesters came along at roughly the same time.