I wouldn't use the word benign. Even those slaveowners
that did could not have ignored the incredible brutality and subjugation that defined
that institution. Thomas Jefferson hated the institution, but could not conceive of a
southern - or of his personal - economic prosperity without
it.
Other southerners believed it was paternalistic -
according to them slaves' souls needed saving, and they would not be able to survive on
their own, so slaveowners claimed to be merely "doing for the slave what they were
unable to do for themselves".
In terms of profitability, I
would have to say immensely so. Some studies have concluded that the average number of
slaves over 236 years, accounting for working life span, average work hours and paid at
minimum wage would come to a bill of nearly $15 trillion. While that has to be a
ballpark figure given some of the guesswork that would have to come into such a model,
the figure is undoubtedly in the trillions, and you can add that to the profit margin of
the entire US economy during those years.
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