A surprising feature of the Forrest excerpt is the prices the slaves were bringing. Surely those are luxury-car prices, in terms of our dollars. Rural land, on the other hand, was comparatively low valued.
I wonder what the 700+ acres of land Forrest bought in “suburban” Shelby County would be worth today. Of course, there are no doubt many “economically disadvantaged” parts of Shelby County where it is worth very little.
As to the practice of slavery itself, I read “Arguing About Slavery; John Quincy Adams and the Great Battle in the United States Congress” a few months ago. I discovered that slavery was a morally corrosive practice, probably on a par with serial adultery. Otherwise upstanding people were reduced to barbarity, and their defense of the “peculiar institution” was abominable.