...the Republicans again ( in 1860) put forward their platform ...only enriched by some additions. Its principal contents were the following: Not a foot of fresh territory is further conceded to slavery. The filibusturing policy abroad must cease. The reopening of the slave trade is stigmatized...
The vitally important point in this platform was that not a foot of fresh terrain was conceded to slavery; rather it was to remain once and for all confined within the boundaries of the states where it already legally existed. Slavery was thus to be formally interned; but continual expansion of territory and continual spread of slavery beyond its old limits is a law of life for the slave states of the Union.
The cultivation of the southern export articles, cotton, tobacco, sugar, etc, carried on by slaves, is only remunerative as long as it is conducted with large gangs of slaves, on a mass scale and on wide expanses of a naturally fertile soil, which requires only simple labour. Intensive cultivation, which depends less on fertility of the soil than on investment of capital, intelligence and energy of labour, is contrary to the nature of slavery. Hence, the rapid transformation of states like Maryland and Virginia, which formerly employed slaves in the production of export articles, into states which raise slaves to export the into the deep South. Even in South Carolina, where the slaves form four-sevenths of the population, the cultivation of cotton has become almost completely stationary for years due to exhaustion of the soil....As soon as this point is reached, the acquisition of new Territories becomes necessary, so that one sectio of the slaveholders with their slaves may occupy new fertile lands and that a new market for slave-raising, therefore for the sale of slaves, may be created for the remaining section...
(end quote )
Charles Brown
Detroit
>>> Michael Perelman <michael at ecst.csuchico.edu> 11/10 12:35 PM >>>
> I read a book last year called "Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men"
> by Jeffrey Hummel. He comes at things from a right-libertarian
> viewpoint, but his grasp of the literature is amazing. It's his
> contention that the North should have followed the recommendations of
> abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and let the south go; that
> without the "enforcement subsidy" of the fugative slave laws, slavery
> was uneconomic and would die on its own.
>
A good number of commentators thought that the slave economy was profitable only because of the expansion of cotton to new territories, that required an infusion of new slaves. Since slaves could not longer be imported, the plantations acted as [indirect and sometimes direct] breeders. The profits from selling "surplus" slaves allowed the old plantations to be profitable.
Also, Karl Marx used Fredrick Law Olmstead's articles on slavery [the 2 corresponded with each other] to show how that slavery would necessarily be unprofitable in the long run.
Here is an echo of Olmstead in modern economics:
Kauffmann, Kyle. D. 1993. "Why Was the Mule Used in Southern Agriculture? Empirical Evidence of Principal-Agent Solutions." Explorations in Economic History, 30: 3 (July): pp. 336-51. He shows that, even in the twentieth century, mules were more frequently used where sharecropping was most common, since croppers tended to use the landlord's work stock.
340: Olmstead, Frederick Law. 1904. A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States in the Years 1853-1854 (NY: Putnam): p. 51 "When I ask why mules are so universally substituted for horses on the farm, the first reason given ... is, that horses cannot bear the treatment that they get from negroes." He gives other sources. 336: Mules are consistently more expensive than horses. 337: Mules were used more extensively in the South since sharecroppers did not own the farm animals. They had little incentive to conserve the stock. 339: Mules resist injury more than horses. They resist overwork and require less grooming than horses.
348: In the North, mules were used more by the lumberman, again suggesting a principal-agent situation.
349-50: He uses data from Georgia to show that mules were used more frequently in counties where sharecropping was more common.
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Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University michael at ecst.csuchico.edu Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901