What Economic and Social Factors in the United States Led to Differing Ideas About Slavery

Slavery in the United States

Slavery is fundamentally an economic phenomenon. Throughout history, slavery has existed where it has been economically worthwhile to those in ability. The principal example in modern times is the U.Due south. Southward. Nearly iv million slaves with a market value estimated to be between $3.1 and $three.6 billion lived in the U.S. just before the Civil War. Masters enjoyed rates of return on slaves comparable to those on other assets; cotton consumers, insurance companies, and industrial enterprises benefited from slavery every bit well. Such valuable property required rules to protect it, and the institutional practices surrounding slavery display a sophistication that rivals mod-twenty-four hour period police and concern.

THE SPREAD OF SLAVERY IN THE U.S.

Non long after Columbus set canvass for the New World, the French and Spanish brought slaves with them on various expeditions. Slaves accompanied Ponce de Leon to Florida in 1513, for example. But a far greater proportion of slaves arrived in chains in crowded, sweltering cargo holds. The first dark-skinned slaves in what was to become British North America arrived in Virginia — peradventure stopping commencement in Spanish lands — in 1619 aboard a Dutch vessel. From 1500 to 1900, approximately 12 1000000 Africans were forced from their homes to go due west, with about 10 million of them completing the journey. Nonetheless very few ended up in the British colonies and immature American republic. Past 1808, when the trans-Atlantic slave trade to the U.Due south. officially concluded, only about six percent of African slaves landing in the New World had come to North America.

Slavery in the North

Colonial slavery had a dull starting time, especially in the Northward. The proportion there never got much above 5 pct of the total population. Scholars have speculated as to why, without coming to a definite conclusion. Some surmise that indentured servants were fundamentally better suited to the Northern climate, crops, and tasks at mitt; some claim that anti-slavery sentiment provided the explanation. At the time of the American Revolution, fewer than 10 pct of the half meg slaves in the thirteen colonies resided in the North, working primarily in agriculture. New York had the greatest number, with merely over 20,000. New Jersey had close to 12,000 slaves. Vermont was the first Northern region to abolish slavery when it became an contained republic in 1777. Most of the original Northern colonies implemented a process of gradual emancipation in the tardily eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, requiring the children of slave mothers to remain in servitude for a set period, typically 28 years. Other regions above the Stonemason-Dixon line ended slavery upon statehood early in the nineteenth century — Ohio in 1803 and Indiana in 1816, for case.

Table i
Population of the Original Thirteen Colonies, selected years by type

1750	1750	1790	1790	1790	1810	1810	1810	1860	1860	1860	State
White	Black	White	Free	Slave	White	Free	Slave	White	Free	Slave
			Nonwhite			Nonwhite			Nonwhite
108,270	iii,010	232,236	two,771	2,648	255,179	vi,453	310	451,504	8,643	–	Connecticut
27,208	i,496	46,310	three,899	8,887	55,361	13,136	4,177	90,589	nineteen,829	one,798	Delaware
4,200	i,000	52,886	398	29,264	145,414	ane,801	105,218	591,550	3,538	462,198	Georgia
97,623	43,450	208,649	8,043	103,036	235,117	33,927	111,502	515,918	83,942	87,189	Maryland
183,925	4,075	373,187	5,369	–	465,303	6,737	–	one,221,432	9,634	–	Massachusetts
26,955	550	141,112	630	157	182,690	970	–	325,579	494	–	New Hampshire
66,039	5,354	169,954	2,762	eleven,423	226,868	7,843	10,851	646,699	25,318	–	New Jersey
65,682	11,014	314,366	4,682	21,193	918,699	25,333	15,017	iii,831,590	49,145	–	New York
53,184	19,800	289,181	five,041	100,783	376,410	ten,266	168,824	629,942	31,621	331,059	Northward Carolina
116,794	ii,872	317,479	6,531	3,707	786,804	22,492	795	2,849,259	56,956	–	Pennsylvania
29,879	iii,347	64,670	3,484	958	73,214	3,609	108	170,649	3,971	–	Rhode Isle
25,000	39,000	140,178	1,801	107,094	214,196	4,554	196,365	291,300	x,002	402,406	South Carolina
129,581	101,452	442,117	12,866	292,627	551,534	30,570	392,518	1,047,299	58,154	490,865	Virginia

934,340	236,420	2,792,325	58,277	681,777	iv,486,789	167,691	1,005,685	12,663,310	361,247	i,775,515	United States

Source: Historical Statistics of the U.S. (1970), Franklin (1988).

Slavery in the Southward

Throughout colonial and antebellum history, U.South. slaves lived primarily in the South. Slaves comprised less than a 10th of the full Southern population in 1680 just grew to a tertiary past 1790. At that date, 293,000 slaves lived in Virginia alone, making up 42 percent of all slaves in the U.Southward. at the time. South Carolina, N Carolina, and Maryland each had over 100,000 slaves. Later the American Revolution, the Southern slave population exploded, reaching about 1.ane million in 1810 and over 3.9 million in 1860.

Table 2
Population of the South 1790-1860 by type

Year	White	Gratuitous Nonwhite	Slave

1790	1,240,454	32,523	654,121
1800	i,691,892	61,575	851,532
1810	2,118,144	97,284	one,103,700
1820	ii,867,454	130,487	1,509,904
1830	3,614,600	175,074	i,983,860
1840	4,601,873	207,214	ii,481,390
1850	six,184,477	235,821	iii,200,364
1860	8,036,700	253,082	3,950,511

Source: Historical Statistics of the U.Southward. (1970).

Slave Ownership Patterns

Despite their numbers, slaves typically comprised a minority of the local population. Only in antebellum South Carolina and Mississippi did slaves outnumber free persons. Near Southerners endemic no slaves and most slaves lived in small groups rather than on large plantations. Less than one-quarter of white Southerners held slaves, with half of these holding fewer than five and fewer than one per centum owning more than than one hundred. In 1860, the boilerplate number of slaves residing together was well-nigh ten.

TABLE 3
Slaves every bit a Percent of the Full Population
selected years, by Southern state

	1750	1790	1810	1860
State	Blackness/total	Slave/total	Slave/total	Slave/total
	population	population	population	population

Alabama				45.12
Arkansas				25.52
Delaware	v.21	fifteen.04	5.75	i.lx
Florida				43.97
Georgia	19.23	35.45	41.68	43.72
Kentucky		16.87	19.82	xix.51
Louisiana				46.85
Maryland	thirty.80	32.23	29.30	12.69
Mississippi				55.xviii
Missouri				9.72
Northward Carolina	27.13	25.51	xxx.39	33.35
South Carolina	sixty.94	43.00	47.xxx	57.18
Tennessee			17.02	24.84
Texas				30.22
Virginia	43.91	39.14	forty.27	30.75

Overall	37.97	33.95	33.25	32.27

Sources: Historical Statistics of the United states (1970), Franklin (1988).

TABLE 4
Holdings of Southern Slaveowners
by states, 1860

Country	Full	Held 1	Held two	Held 3	Held 4	Held v	Held 1-five	Held 100-	Held 500+
	slaveholders	slave	slaves	Slaves	slaves	slaves	slaves	499 slaves	slaves

AL	33,730	5,607	three,663	2,805	2,329	one,986	16,390	344	–
AR	11,481	2,339	1,503	1,070	894	730	6,536	65	1
DE	587	237	114	74	51	34	510	–	–
FL	five,152	863	568	437	365	285	2,518	47	–
GA	41,084	6,713	iv,335	3,482	2,984	2,543	20,057	211	8
KY	38,645	9,306	five,430	4,009	3,281	2,694	24,720	7	–
LA	22,033	4,092	2,573	2,034	1,536	1,310	11,545	543	4
MD	thirteen,783	4,119	one,952	1,279	i,023	815	nine,188	16	–
MS	xxx,943	4,856	iii,201	ii,503	2,129	1,809	14,498	315	1
MO	24,320	vi,893	iii,754	ii,773	2,243	1,686	17,349	iv	–
NC	34,658	half-dozen,440	4,017	three,068	2,546	2,245	18,316	133	–
SC	26,701	3,763	2,533	1,990	1,731	1,541	11,558	441	eight
TN	36,844	7,820	four,738	three,609	iii,012	2,536	21,715	47	–
TX	21,878	4,593	2,874	ii,093	1,782	1,439	12,781	54	–
VA	52,128	eleven,085	v,989	iv,474	iii,807	3,233	28,588	114	–

TOTAL	393,967	78,726	47,244	35,700	29,713	24,886	216,269	ii,341	22

Source: Historical Statistics of the United States (1970).

Rapid Natural Increase in U.S. Slave Population

How did the U.Due south. slave population increase well-nigh fourfold between 1810 and 1860, given the demise of the trans-Atlantic trade? They enjoyed an exceptional rate of natural increase. Different elsewhere in the New Globe, the South did not crave constant infusions of immigrant slaves to go along its slave population intact. In fact, by 1825, 36 percent of the slaves in the Western hemisphere lived in the U.S. This was partly due to higher birth rates, which were in turn due to a more equal ratio of female to male slaves in the U.S. relative to other parts of the Americas. Lower mortality rates also figured prominently. Climate was one cause; crops were some other. U.S. slaves planted and harvested get-go tobacco and then, later Eli Whitney'due south invention of the cotton gin in 1793, cotton. This piece of work was relatively less grueling than the tasks on the saccharide plantations of the Due west Indies and in the mines and fields of South America. Southern slaves worked in industry, did domestic work, and grew a variety of other food crops as well, mostly under less abusive weather condition than their counterparts elsewhere. For example, the Due south grew half to three-quarters of the corn ingather harvested betwixt 1840 and 1860.

INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK

Cardinal to the success of slavery are political and legal institutions that validate the ownership of other persons. A Kentucky court acknowledged the dual character of slaves in Turner v. Johnson (1838): "[S]laves are belongings and must, under our present institutions, be treated every bit such. Merely they are homo beings, with like passions, sympathies, and angel with ourselves." To construct slave law, lawmakers borrowed from laws concerning personal property and animals, besides every bit from rules regarding servants, employees, and gratis persons. The outcome was a gear up of doctrines that supported the Southern way of life.

The English common police force of property formed a foundation for U.S. slave law. The French and Spanish influence in Louisiana — and, to a lesser extent, Texas — meant that Roman (or ceremonious) law offered building blocks there every bit well. Despite certain formal distinctions, slave law as expert differed little from common-law to civil-law states. Southern state police force governed roughly 5 areas: slave status, masters' treatment of slaves, interactions between slaveowners and contractual partners, rights and duties of noncontractual parties toward others' slaves, and slave crimes. Federal constabulary and laws in diverse Northern states likewise dealt with matters of interstate commerce, travel, and fugitive slaves.

Interestingly enough, only as slave law combined elements of other sorts of law, so too did it yield principles that eventually applied elsewhere. Lawmakers had to consider the intelligence and volition of slaves every bit they crafted laws to preserve belongings rights. Slavery therefore created legal rules that could potentially apply to complimentary persons too as to those in bondage. Many legal principles nosotros now consider standard in fact had their origins in slave police force.

Legal Status Of Slaves And Blacks

By the end of the seventeenth century, the status of blacks — slave or complimentary — tended to follow the status of their mothers. Generally, "white" persons were not slaves but Native and African Americans could exist. I odd case was the offspring of a free white woman and a slave: the law oft jump these people to servitude for thirty-i years. Conversion to Christianity could set up a slave costless in the early colonial period, but this exercise chop-chop disappeared.

Skin Color and Status

Southern law largely identified skin color with condition. Those who appeared African or of African descent were mostly presumed to be slaves. Virginia was the only state to laissez passer a statute that actually classified people by race: essentially, it considered those with one quarter or more black ancestry as black. Other states used informal tests in addition to visual inspection: one-quarter, one-eighth, or one-sixteenth black ancestry might categorize a person as black.

Even if blacks proved their freedom, they enjoyed trivial higher status than slaves except, to some extent, in Louisiana. Many Southern states forbade complimentary persons of color from condign preachers, selling sure appurtenances, tending bar, staying out past a certain time of dark, or owning dogs, among other things. Federal law denied black persons citizenship under the Dred Scott decision (1857). In this case, Chief Justice Roger Taney also adamant that visiting a complimentary land did not free a slave who returned to a slave state, nor did traveling to a complimentary territory ensure emancipation.

Rights And Responsibilities Of Slave Masters

Southern masters enjoyed great freedom in their dealings with slaves. North Carolina Master Justice Thomas Ruffin expressed the sentiments of many Southerners when he wrote in Land v. Mann (1829): "The power of the chief must be absolute, to render the submission of the slave perfect." Past the nineteenth century, household heads had far more physical power over their slaves than their employees. In part, the differences in allowable punishment had to do with the substitutability of other means of persuasion. Instead of physical coercion, antebellum employers could legally withhold all wages if a worker did not complete all agreed-upon services. No such alternate mechanism existed for slaves.

Despite the respect Southerners held for the ability of masters, the constabulary — peculiarly in the thirty years before the Ceremonious State of war — limited owners somewhat. Southerners feared that unchecked slave abuse could atomic number 82 to theft, public beatings, and insurrection. People also thought that hungry slaves would steal produce and livestock. Simply masters who treated slaves too well, or gave them freedom, caused consternation as well. The preamble to Delaware's Human activity of 1767 conveys one prevalent view: "[I]t is constitute by experience, that freed [N]egroes and mulattoes are idle and slothful, and ofttimes bear witness crushing to the neighborhood wherein they live, and are of evil examples to slaves." Accordingly, masters sometimes barbarous afoul of the criminal constabulary not simply when they brutalized or neglected their slaves, but too when they indulged or manumitted slaves. Nevertheless, prosecuting masters was extremely difficult, considering often the only witnesses were slaves or wives, neither of whom could testify confronting male person heads of household.

Law of Manumission

One surface area that changed dramatically over fourth dimension was the law of manumission. The South initially allowed masters to set their slaves complimentary because this was an inherent right of belongings ownership. During the Revolutionary period, some Southern leaders as well believed that manumission was consequent with the ideology of the new nation. Manumission occurred only rarely in colonial times, increased dramatically during the Revolution, then diminished later on the early 1800s. By the 1830s, nearly Southern states had begun to limit manumission. Assuasive masters to free their slaves at will created incentives to emancipate but unproductive slaves. Consequently, the customs at large bore the costs of young, old, and disabled former slaves. The public might too run the gamble of having rebellious former slaves in its midst.

Antebellum U.Southward. Southern states worried considerably almost these problems and somewhen enacted restrictions on the age at which slaves could be free, the number freed by any one master, and the number manumitted by final will. Some required one-time masters to file indemnifying bonds with state treasurers so governments would not accept to back up indigent one-time slaves. Some instead required former owners to contribute to ex-slaves' upkeep. Many states limited manumissions to slaves of a certain historic period who were capable of earning a living. A few states made masters emancipate their slaves out of country or encouraged slaveowners to bequeath slaves to the Colonization Society, which would and so send the freed slaves to Republic of liberia. Quondam slaves sometimes paid fees on the way out of town to brand upwards for lost holding tax revenue; they oft encountered hostility and residential fees on the other end every bit well. By 1860, nigh Southern states had banned in-state and post-mortem manumissions, and some had enacted procedures by which free blacks could voluntarily become slaves.

Other Restrictions

In addition to constraints on manumission, laws restricted other actions of masters and, past extension, slaves. Masters generally had to maintain a certain ratio of white to black residents upon plantations. Some laws barred slaves from owning musical instruments or bearing firearms. All states refused to let slaves to make contracts or show in court against whites. Nigh half of Southern states prohibited masters from teaching slaves to read and write although some of these permitted slaves to learn rudimentary mathematics. Masters could use slaves for some tasks and responsibilities, only they typically could not order slaves to compel payment, crush white men, or sample cotton. Nor could slaves officially hire themselves out to others, although such prohibitions were often ignored by masters, slaves, hirers, and public officials. Owners faced fines and sometimes damages if their slaves stole from others or caused injuries.

Southern law did encourage benevolence, at to the lowest degree if it tended to supplement the lash and shackle. Court opinions in particular indicate the conventionalities that good treatment of slaves could heighten labor productivity, increase plantation profits, and reinforce sentimental ties. Allowing slaves to control minor amounts of property, even if statutes prohibited it, was an oft-sanctioned practice. Courts also permitted slaves small diversions, such equally Christmas parties and quilting bees, despite statutes that barred slave assemblies.

Sale, Hire, And Transportation Of Slaves

Sales of Slaves

Slaves were freely bought and sold across the antebellum S. Southern constabulary offered greater protection to slave buyers than to buyers of other appurtenances, in part because slaves were circuitous commodities with characteristics not hands ascertained past inspection. Slave sellers were responsible for their representations, required to disclose known defects, and often liable for unknown defects, every bit well as bound past explicit contractual language. These rules stand in stark contrast to the caveat emptor doctrine applied in antebellum commodity sales cases. In fact, they more than closely resemble certain provisions of the mod Compatible Commercial Code. Sales law in ii states stands out. Due south Carolina was extremely pro-buyer, presuming that any slave sold at full cost was sound. Louisiana buyers enjoyed extensive legal protection as well. A sold slave who afterward manifested an incurable affliction or vice — such as a tendency to escape frequently — could generate a lawsuit that entitled the purchaser to nullify the auction.

Hiring Out Slaves

Slaves faced the possibility of existence hired out by their masters as well as being sold. Although scholars disagree most the extent of hiring in agronomics, well-nigh concur that hired slaves frequently worked in manufacturing, structure, mining, and domestic service. Hired slaves and free persons often labored side by side. Bond and free workers both faced a legal burden to deport responsibly on the job. Yet the law of the workplace differed significantly for the 2: more often than not speaking, employers were far more culpable in cases of injuries to slaves. The divergent law for slave and gratis workers does not necessarily imply that free workers suffered. Empirical show shows that nineteenth-century free laborers received at least partial compensation for the risks of jobs. Indeed, the tripartite nature of slave-hiring arrangements suggests why antebellum laws appeared every bit they did. Whereas complimentary persons had straight piece of work and contractual relations with their bosses, slaves worked under terms designed by others. Free workers arguably could have walked out or insisted on different atmospheric condition or wages. Slaves could not. The law therefore offered substitute protections. Still, the powerful interests of slaveowners also may mean that they but were more than successful at shaping the police force. Postbellum developments in employment law — North and S — in fact paralleled earlier slave-hiring constabulary, at times relying upon slave cases as legal precedents.

Public Transportation

Public transportation also figured into slave law: slaves suffered death and injury aboard common carriers as well as traveled every bit legitimate passengers and fugitives. Equally elsewhere, slave-mutual carrier constabulary both borrowed from and established precedents for other areas of law. One cardinal doctrine originating in slave cases was the "last-clear-chance dominion." Common-carrier defendants that had failed to offering slaves — even negligent slaves — a last clear adventure to avert accidents ended upwards paying damages to slaveowners. Slaveowner plaintiffs won several cases in the decade before the Civil War when engineers failed to warn slaves off railroad tracks. Postbellum courts used slave cases as precedents to entrench the concluding-clear-hazard doctrine.

Slave Control: Patrollers And Overseers

Club at large shared in maintaining the mechanism of slavery. In place of a standing law force, Southern states passed legislation to establish and regulate county-wide denizen patrols. Substantially, Southern citizens took upon themselves the protection of their neighbors' interests as well as their own. County courts had local authoritative authorisation; court officials appointed three to five men per patrol from a pool of white male citizens to serve for a specified period. Typical patrol duty ranged from ane night per week for a twelvemonth to twelve hours per month for three months. Non all white men had to serve: judges, magistrates, ministers, and sometimes millers and blacksmiths enjoyed exemptions. So did those in the higher ranks of the state militia. In many states, courts had to select from adult males nether a certain age, usually 45, 50, or 60. Some states allowed but slaveowners or householders to join patrols. Patrollers typically earned fees for captured fugitive slaves and exemption from road or militia duty, equally well as hourly wages. Keeping order amidst slaves was the patrollers' primary duty. Statutes set guidelines for appropriate handling of slaves and often imposed fines for unlawful beatings. In rare instances, patrollers had to compensate masters for injured slaves. For the nigh part, even so, patrollers enjoyed quasi-judicial or quasi-executive powers in their dealings with slaves.

Overseers allowable considerable control likewise. The Southern overseer was the linchpin of the big slave plantation. He ran daily operations and served as a first line of defense in safeguarding whites. The vigorous protests confronting drafting overseers into military machine service during the Civil War reveal their significance to the S. Yet slaves were too valuable to exist left to the whims of frustrated, angry overseers. Injuries caused to slaves by overseers' cruelty (or "immoral behave") usually entitled masters to recover civil amercement. Overseers occasionally confronted criminal charges as well. Brutality by overseers naturally generated responses by their victims; at times, courts reduced murder charges to manslaughter when slaves killed abusive overseers.

Protecting The Chief Against Loss: Slave Injury And Slave Stealing

Whether they liked information technology or not, many Southerners dealt daily with slaves. Southern law shaped these interactions among strangers, awarding damages more often for injuries to slaves than injuries to other belongings or persons, shielding slaves more than gratuitous persons from brutality, and generating convictions more than often in slave-stealing cases than in other criminal cases. The law likewise recognized more offenses against slaveowners than against other property owners because slaves, unlike other property, succumbed to influence.

Just every bit assaults of slaves generated civil amercement and criminal penalties, so did stealing a slave to sell him or help him escape to freedom. Many Southerners considered slave stealing worse than killing fellow citizens. In marked contrast, selling a costless black person into slavery carried almost no penalization.

The analogue to helping slaves escape — picking up fugitives — also created laws. Southern states offered rewards to defray the costs of capture or passed statutes requiring owners to pay fees to those who defenseless and returned slaves. Some Northern citizens worked mitt-in-manus with their Southern counterparts, returning fugitive slaves to masters either with or without the prompting of police. Simply many Northerners vehemently opposed the peculiar institution. In an attempt to stitch together the young nation, the federal government passed the offset avoiding slave act in 1793. To circumvent its application, several Northern states passed personal liberty laws in the 1840s. Stronger federal fugitive slave legislation then passed in 1850. Still, plenty slaves fled to freedom — perhaps as many every bit 15,000 in the decade before the Civil State of war — with the aid (or inaction) of Northerners that the profession of "slave-catching" evolved. This occupation was ofttimes highly risky — enough then that such men could not purchase life insurance coverage — and but as often highly lucrative.

Slave Crimes

Southern police force governed slaves as well as slaveowners and their adversaries. What few due process protections slaves possessed stemmed from desires to grant rights to masters. Nevertheless, slaves faced harsh penalties for their crimes. When slaves stole, rioted, set fires, or killed free people, the law sometimes had to subvert the property rights of masters in society to preserve slavery as a social institution.

Slaves, like other antebellum Southern residents, committed a host of crimes ranging from arson to theft to homicide. Other slave crimes included violating curfew, attending religious meetings without a master'southward consent, and running away. Indeed, a slave was not permitted off his chief's farm or business concern without his owner's permission. In rural areas, a slave was required to bear a written pass to leave the principal'south land.

Southern states erected numerous punishments for slave crimes, including prison terms, banishment, whipping, castration, and execution. In most states, the criminal police for slaves (and blacks by and large) was noticeably harsher than for free whites; in others, slave law as practiced resembled that governing poorer white citizens. Particularly harsh punishments applied to slaves who had allegedly killed their masters or who had committed rebellious acts. Southerners considered these acts of treason and resorted to immolation, drawing and quartering, and hanging.

MARKETS AND PRICES

Market prices for slaves reflect their substantial economic value. Scholars have gathered slave prices from a variety of sources, including censuses, probate records, plantation and slave-trader accounts, and proceedings of slave auctions. These data sets reveal that prime number field hands went for four to 6 hundred dollars in the U.S. in 1800, thirteen to fifteen hundred dollars in 1850, and up to three thousand dollars just before Fort Sumter fell. Fifty-fifty decision-making for inflation, the prices of U.S. slaves rose significantly in the six decades before Southward Carolina seceded from the Matrimony. By 1860, Southerners owned close to $4 billion worth of slaves. Slavery remained a thriving business on the eve of the Civil War: Fogel and Engerman (1974) projected that by 1890 slave prices would have increased on boilerplate more than fifty per centum over their 1860 levels. No wonder the South rose in armed resistance to protect its enormous investment.

Slave markets existed beyond the antebellum U.S. Southward. Even today, ane tin can find stone markers like the one side by side to the Antietam battleground, which reads: "From 1800 to 1865 This Stone Was Used as a Slave Sale Block. It has been a famous landmark at this original location for over 150 years." Individual auctions, estate sales, and professional traders facilitated easy exchange. Established dealers similar Franklin and Armfield in Virginia, Woolfolk, Saunders, and Overly in Maryland, and Nathan Bedford Forrest in Tennessee prospered alongside itinerant traders who operated in a few counties, buying slaves for cash from their owners, then moving them overland in coffles to the lower South. Over a million slaves were taken across state lines between 1790 and 1860 with many more moving within states. Some of these slaves went with their owners; many were sold to new owners. In his monumental study, Michael Tadman (1989) found that slaves who lived in the upper South faced a very real chance of beingness sold for profit. From 1820 to 1860, he estimated that an average of 200,000 slaves per decade moved from the upper to the lower South, about via sales. A gimmicky newspaper, The Virginia Times, calculated that 40,000 slaves were sold in the year 1830.

Determinants of Slave Prices

The prices paid for slaves reflected ii economic factors: the characteristics of the slave and the weather condition of the market place. Important private features included age, sex, childbearing capacity (for females), physical condition, temperament, and skill level. In addition, the supply of slaves, demand for products produced by slaves, and seasonal factors helped determine market conditions and therefore prices.

Age and Price

Prices for both male person and female slaves tended to follow similar life-wheel patterns. In the U.S. Due south, babe slaves sold for a positive cost considering masters expected them to live long enough to make the initial costs of raising them worthwhile. Prices rose through puberty as productivity and experience increased. In nineteenth-century New Orleans, for instance, prices peaked at about age 22 for females and historic period 25 for males. Girls cost more boys up to their mid-teens. The genders and then switched places in terms of value. In the Old South, boys aged fourteen sold for 71 percent of the price of 27-year-onetime men, whereas girls aged 14 sold for 65 percent of the cost of 27-year-one-time men. Later the peak historic period, prices declined slowly for a time, then fell off quickly as the aging process caused productivity to fall. Compared to full-grown men, women were worth 80 to ninety percent equally much. One characteristic in item prepare some females apart: their ability to bear children. Fertile females allowable a premium. The mother-child link also proved important for pricing in a different way: people sometimes paid more for intact families.

Source: Fogel and Engerman (1974)

Other Characteristics and Price

Skills, physical traits, mental capabilities, and other qualities likewise helped determine a slave's price. Skilled workers sold for premiums of 40-55 percent whereas crippled and chronically ill slaves sold for deep discounts. Slaves who proved troublesome — runaways, thieves, layabouts, drunks, boring learners, and the like — also sold for lower prices. Taller slaves cost more than, perhaps because elevation acts as a proxy for healthiness. In New Orleans, light-skinned females (who were frequently used as concubines) sold for a 5 percent premium.

Fluctuations in Supply

Prices for slaves fluctuated with market weather condition equally well as with individual characteristics. U.S. slave prices fell around 1800 equally the Haitian revolution sparked the movement of slaves into the Southern states. Less than a decade later, slave prices climbed when the international slave trade was banned, cutting off legal external supplies. Interestingly enough, among those who supported the endmost of the trans-Atlantic slave trade were several Southern slaveowners. Why this apparent anomaly? Because the resulting reduction in supply collection upwardly the prices of slaves already living in the U.South and, hence, their masters' wealth. U.S. slaves had high plenty fertility rates and low enough mortality rates to reproduce themselves, so Southern slaveowners did not worry about having too few slaves to get around.

Fluctuations in Need

Demand helped determine prices as well. The demand for slaves derived in office from the demand for the commodities and services that slaves provided. Changes in slave occupations and variability in prices for slave-produced goods therefore created movements in slave prices. As slaves replaced increasingly expensive indentured servants in the New World, their prices went up. In the period 1748 to 1775, slave prices in British America rose nearly 30 percent. Every bit cotton prices vicious in the 1840s, Southern slave prices also vicious. But, every bit the demand for cotton and tobacco grew after about 1850, the prices of slaves increased besides.

Interregional Price Differences

Differences in demand beyond regions led to transitional regional price differences, which in turn meant big movements of slaves. Still considering planters experienced greater stability amongst their workforce when entire plantations moved, 84 percent of slaves were taken to the lower South in this style rather than being sold piecemeal.

Time of Twelvemonth and Price

Need sometimes had to do with the time of yr a auction took identify. For example, slave prices in the New Orleans market were ten to 20 percent college in January than in September. Why? September was a busy time of year for plantation owners: the opportunity cost of their time was relatively high. Prices had to exist relatively low for them to exist willing to travel to New Orleans during harvest time.

Expectations and Prices

One additional need cistron loomed large in determining slave prices: the expectation of continued legal slavery. As the American Civil State of war progressed, prices dropped dramatically because people could not be certain that slavery would survive. In New Orleans, prime male person slaves sold on average for $1381 in 1861 and for $1116 in 1862. Burgeoning inflation meant that real prices fell considerably more than. By war'due south end, slaves sold for a small fraction of their 1860 price.

Source: Data supplied past Stanley Engerman and reported in Walton and Rockoff (1994).

PROFITABILITY, EFFICIENCY, AND EXPLOITATION

That slavery was profitable seems almost obvious. However scholars accept argued furiously about this matter. On 1 side stand antebellum writers such as Hinton Rowan Helper and Frederick Police Olmstead, many antebellum abolitionists, and gimmicky scholars like Eugene Genovese (at least in his early on writings), who speculated that American slavery was unprofitable, inefficient, and incompatible with urban life. On the other side are scholars who have marshaled masses of data to support their contention that Southern slavery was profitable and efficient relative to free labor and that slavery suited cities every bit well every bit farms. These researchers stress the similarity between slave markets and markets for other sorts of capital.

Consensus That Slavery Was Assisting

This battle has largely been won by those who claim that New World slavery was profitable. Much like other businessmen, New World slaveowners responded to market signals — adjusting ingather mixes, reallocating slaves to more profitable tasks, hiring out idle slaves, and selling slaves for profit. One well-known case shows that contemporaneous complimentary labor thought that urban slavery may even accept worked also well: employees of the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, Virginia, went out on their first strike in 1847 to protest the use of slave labor at the Works.

Fogel and Engerman's Time on the Cross

Carrying the banner of the "slavery was assisting" campsite is Nobel laureate Robert Fogel. Perhaps the nearly controversial volume ever written about American slavery is Fourth dimension on the Cross, published in 1974 by Fogel and co-writer Stanley Engerman. These men were amid the first to use mod statistical methods, computers, and big datasets to answer a series of empirical questions about the economic science of slavery. To find profit levels and rates of return, they built upon the piece of work of Alfred Conrad and John Meyer, who in 1958 had calculated similar measures from data on cotton wool prices, physical yield per slave, demographic characteristics of slaves (including expected lifespan), maintenance and supervisory costs, and (in the case of females) number of children. To estimate the relative efficiency of farms, Fogel and Engerman devised an index of "total factor productivity," which measured the output per average unit of input on each type of farm. They included in this index controls for quality of livestock and land and for historic period and sex activity limerick of the workforce, as well every bit amounts of output, labor, land, and capital

Time on the Cross generated praise — and considerable criticism. A major critique appeared in 1976 as a collection of articles entitled Reckoning with Slavery. Although some contributors took umbrage at the tone of the book and denied that it broke new footing, others focused on flawed and insufficient data and inappropriate inferences. Despite its shortcomings, Time on the Cantankerous inarguably brought people's attention to a new way of viewing slavery. The book as well served equally a catalyst for much subsequent enquiry. Even Eugene Genovese, long an ardent proponent of the belief that Southern planters had held slaves for their prestige value, finally acknowledged that slavery was probably a profitable enterprise. Fogel himself refined and expanded his views in a 1989 book, Without Consent or Contract.

Efficiency Estimates

Fogel'southward and Engerman's research led them to conclude that investments in slaves generated loftier rates of return, masters held slaves for profit motives rather than for prestige, and slavery thrived in cities and rural areas alike. They too found that antebellum Southern farms were 35 percent more efficient overall than Northern ones and that slave farms in the New South were 53 percent more efficient than free farms in either N or South. This would mean that a slave subcontract that is otherwise identical to a costless farm (in terms of the corporeality of land, livestock, machinery and labor used) would produce output worth 53 percent more than the free. On the eve of the Civil War, slavery flourished in the South and generated a rate of economic growth comparable to that of many European countries, co-ordinate to Fogel and Engerman. They also discovered that, because slaves constituted a considerable portion of individual wealth, masters fed and treated their slaves reasonably well. Although some evidence indicates that infant and young slaves suffered much worse conditions than their freeborn counterparts, teenaged and adult slaves lived in conditions similar to — sometimes amend than — those enjoyed by many costless laborers of the aforementioned period.

Transition from Indentured Servitude to Slavery

One stiff piece of evidence supporting the notion that slavery provides pecuniary benefits is this: slavery replaces other labor when it becomes relatively cheaper. In the early U.South. colonies, for example, indentured servitude was common. Equally the need for skilled servants (and therefore their wages) rose in England, the cost of indentured servants went up in the colonies. At the same time, 2nd-generation slaves became more productive than their forebears because they spoke English and did non have to adjust to life in a foreign new earth. Consequently, the balance of labor shifted away from indentured servitude and toward slavery.

Gang System

The value of slaves arose in part from the value of labor more often than not in the antebellum U.Due south. Scarce factors of production command economical rent, and labor was past far the scarcest available input in America. Moreover, a large proportion of the reward to owning and working slaves resulted from innovative labor practices. Certainly, the use of the "gang" system in agriculture contributed to profits in the antebellum period. In the gang organization, groups of slaves perfomed synchronized tasks under the watchful overseer's eye, much similar parts of a single machine. Masters found that treating people like mechanism paid off handsomely.

Antebellum slaveowners experimented with a variety of other methods to increase productivity. They developed an elaborate arrangement of "manus ratings" in club to improve the match between the slave worker and the job. Paw ratings categorized slaves past age and sex and rated their productivity relative to that of a prime male person field manus. Masters besides capitalized on the native intelligence of slaves past using them as agents to receive goods, continue books, and the similar.

Employ of Positive Incentives

Masters offered positive incentives to make slaves work more efficiently. Slaves often had Sundays off. Slaves could sometimes earn bonuses in cash or in kind, or quit early if they finished tasks speedily. Some masters allowed slaves to keep part of the harvest or to work their own pocket-sized plots. In places, slaves could even sell their own crops. To prevent stealing, however, many masters express the products that slaves could raise and sell, circumscribed them to corn or brownish cotton, for example. In antebellum Louisiana, slaves even had under their control a sum of money called a peculium. This served as a sort of working uppercase, enabling slaves to constitute thriving businesses that frequently benefited their masters equally well. Yet these practices may accept helped lead to the downfall of slavery, for they gave slaves a taste of freedom that left them longing for more.

Slave Families

Masters profited from reproduction too as production. Southern planters encouraged slaves to accept large families because U.S. slaves lived long enough — unlike those elsewhere in the New Earth — to generate more than revenue than cost over their lifetimes. But researchers take found little evidence of slave breeding; instead, masters encouraged slaves to live in nuclear or extended families for stability. Lest one recollect sentimentality triumphed on the Southern plantation, one need only recall the willingness of most masters to sell if the bottom line was bonny enough.

Profitability and African Heritage

One element that contributed to the profitability of New Earth slavery was the African heritage of slaves. Africans, more than than ethnic Americans, were accustomed to the discipline of agricultural practices and knew metalworking. Some scholars surmise that Africans, relative to Europeans, could improve withstand tropical diseases and, unlike Native Americans, also had some exposure to the European affliction pool.

Ease of Identifying Slaves

Perhaps the most distinctive feature of Africans, yet, was their skin color. Considering they looked unlike from their masters, their movements were piece of cake to monitor. Denying slaves education, property ownership, contractual rights, and other things enjoyed past those in power was simple: one needed only to await at people to ascertain their likely condition. Using color was a low-cost way of distinguishing slaves from gratuitous persons. For this reason, the colonial practices that freed slaves who converted to Christianity quickly faded away. Deciphering true religious beliefs is far more than difficult than establishing skin color. Other slave societies accept used distinguishing marks like brands or long hair to announce slaves, yet color is far more than immutable and therefore improve as a cheap mode of keeping slaves dissever. Skin color, of grade, can also serve as a racist identifying marker fifty-fifty after slavery itself disappears.

Profit Estimates

Slavery never generated superprofits, because people ever had the option of putting their coin elsewhere. Nevertheless, investment in slaves offered a charge per unit of return — about x per centum — that was comparable to returns on other assets. Slaveowners were not the only ones to reap rewards, however. So too did cotton consumers who enjoyed low prices and Northern entrepreneurs who helped finance plantation operations.

Exploitation Estimates

So slavery was profitable; was it an efficient way of organizing the workforce? On this question, considerable controversy remains. Slavery might well take profited masters, but merely because they exploited their chattel. What is more, slavery could have locked people into a method of production and way of life that might later have proven crushing.

Fogel and Engerman (1974) claimed that slaves kept well-nigh 90 percentage of what they produced. Because these scholars besides found that agricultural slavery produced relatively more output for a given set of inputs, they argued that slaves may actually have shared in the overall material benefits resulting from the gang system. Other scholars contend that slaves in fact kept less than half of what they produced and that slavery, while profitable, certainly was not efficient. On the whole, electric current estimates suggest that the typical slave received only about fifty per centum of the extra output that he or she produced.

Did Slavery Retard Southern Economic Development?

Gavin Wright (1978) chosen attention as well to the departure between the short run and the long run. He noted that slaves accounted for a very large proportion of virtually masters' portfolios of avails. Although slavery might have seemed an efficient ways of production at a signal in fourth dimension, it tied masters to a sure system of labor which might not have adapted quickly to changed economic circumstances. This argument has some merit. Although the South's growth rate compared favorably with that of the Northward in the antebellum period, a considerable portion of wealth was held in the easily of planters. Consequently, commercial and service industries lagged in the Due south. The region besides had far less rail transportation than the North. Notwithstanding many plantations used the most avant-garde technologies of the solar day, and sure innovative commercial and insurance practices appeared first in transactions involving slaves. What is more, although the South brutal behind the North and Great Britain in its level of manufacturing, it compared favorably to other advanced countries of the fourth dimension. In sum, no clear consensus emerges equally to whether the antebellum South created a standard of living comparable to that of the Northward or, if it did, whether it could have sustained it.

Ultimately, the South'south system of law, politics, business, and social community strengthened the shackles of slavery and reinforced racial stereotyping. Equally such, it was undeniably evil. Still, because slaves constituted valuable property, their masters had ample incentives to take care of them. And, past protecting the property rights of masters, slave law necessarily sheltered the persons embodied within. In a sense, the apologists for slavery were correct: slaves sometimes fared ameliorate than free persons considering powerful people had a stake in their well-being.

Decision: Slavery Cannot Be Seen As Benign

Simply slavery cannot be thought of as benign. In terms of material conditions, diet, and treatment, Southern slaves may have fared as well in many ways as the poorest grade of free citizens. Yet the root of slavery is compulsion. Past its very nature, slavery involves involuntary transactions. Slaves are belongings, whereas free laborers are persons who make choices (at times constrained, of course) about the sort of work they exercise and the number of hours they work.

The behavior of erstwhile slaves later abolition clearly reveals that they cared strongly about the manner of their piece of work and valued their non-work fourth dimension more than highly than masters did. Even the most chivalrous former masters in the U.S. South found it impossible to entice their onetime chattels back into gang work, fifty-fifty with large wage premiums. Nor could they persuade women back into the labor force: many female ex-slaves simply chose to stay at domicile. In the end, perhaps slavery is an economic phenomenon simply because slave societies fail to business relationship for the incalculable costs borne past the slaves themselves.

REFERENCES AND Farther READING

For studies pertaining to the economics of slavery, run across particularly Aitken, Hugh, editor. Did Slavery Pay? Readings in the Economics of Blackness Slavery in the United States. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1971.

Barzel, Yoram. "An Economical Analysis of Slavery." Journal of Police and Economics 20 (1977): 87-110.

Conrad, Alfred H., and John R. Meyer. The Economics of Slavery and Other Studies. Chicago: Aldine, 1964.

David, Paul A., Herbert G. Gutman, Richard Sutch, Peter Temin, and Gavin Wright. Reckoning with Slavery: A Disquisitional Report in the Quantitative History of American Negro Slavery. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976

Fogel , Robert W. Without Consent or Contract. New York: Norton, 1989.

Fogel, Robert Due west., and Stanley L. Engerman. Time on the Cantankerous: The Economic science of American Negro Slavery. New York: Footling, Brownish, 1974.

Galenson, David W. Traders, Planters, and Slaves: Market Behavior in Early English language America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986

Kotlikoff, Laurence. "The Structure of Slave Prices in New Orleans, 1804-1862." Economic Research 17 (1979): 496-518.

Ransom, Roger L., and Richard Sutch. One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of Emancipation. New York: Cambridge Academy Press, 1977.

Ransom, Roger 50., and Richard Sutch "Capitalists Without Capital" Agricultural History 62 (1988): 133-160.

Vedder, Richard K. "The Slave Exploitation (Expropriation) Rate." Explorations in Economical History 12 (1975): 453-57.

Wright, Gavin. The Political Economy of the Cotton Due south: Households, Markets, and Wealth in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Norton, 1978.

Yasuba, Yasukichi. "The Profitability and Viability of Slavery in the U.Due south." Economic Studies Quarterly 12 (1961): 60-67.

For accounts of slave trading and sales, encounter
Bancroft, Frederic. Slave Trading in the Old South. New York: Ungar, 1931. Tadman, Michael. Speculators and Slaves. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989.

For give-and-take of the profession of slave catchers, run into
Campbell, Stanley W. The Slave Catchers. Chapel Loma: University of North Carolina Press, 1968.

To read about slaves in manufacture and urban areas, run across
Dew, Charles B. Slavery in the Antebellum Southern Industries. Bethesda: University Publications of America, 1991.

Goldin, Claudia D. Urban Slavery in the American South, 1820-1860: A Quantitative History. Chicago: University of Chicago Printing,1976.

Starobin, Robert. Industrial Slavery in the Old South. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.

For discussions of masters and overseers, meet
Oakes, James. The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders. New York: Knopf, 1982.

Roark, James Fifty. Masters Without Slaves. New York: Norton, 1977.

Scarborough, William K. The Overseer: Plantation Management in the Old S. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1966.

On indentured servitude, see
Galenson, David. "Rise and Fall of Indentured Servitude in the Americas: An Economic Assay." Journal of Economic History 44 (1984): 1-26.

Galenson, David. White Servitude in Colonial America: An Economic Analysis. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Grubb, Farley. "Immigrant Servant Labor: Their Occupational and Geographic Distribution in the Late Eighteenth Century Mid-Atlantic Economy." Social Science History nine (1985): 249-75.

Menard, Russell R. "From Servants to Slaves: The Transformation of the Chesapeake Labor Arrangement." Southern Studies sixteen (1977): 355-xc.

On slave law, see
Fede, Andrew. "Legal Protection for Slave Buyers in the U.South. South." American Journal of Legal History 31 (1987). Finkelman, Paul. An Imperfect Matrimony: Slavery, Federalism, and Comity. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1981.

Finkelman, Paul. Slavery, Race, and the American Legal System, 1700-1872. New York: Garland, 1988.

Finkelman, Paul, ed. Slavery and the Constabulary. Madison: Madison House, 1997.

Flanigan, Daniel J. The Criminal Law of Slavery and Freedom, 1800-68. New York: Garland, 1987.

Morris, Thomas D., Southern Slavery and the Law: 1619-1860. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Printing, 1996.

Schafer, Judith G. Slavery, The Civil Police force, and the Supreme Court of Louisiana. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Printing, 1994.

Tushnet, Mark V. The American Police force of Slavery, 1810-60: Considerations of Humanity and Involvement. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981.

Wahl, Jenny B. The Bondsman's Burden: An Economical Assay of the Common Police force of Southern Slavery. New York: Cambridge University Printing, 1998.

Other useful sources include
Berlin, Ira, and Philip D. Morgan, eds. The Slave'southward Economy: Independent Production past Slaves in the Americas. London: Frank Cass, 1991.

Berlin, Ira, and Philip D. Morgan, eds, Cultivation and Culture: Labor and the Shaping of Slave Life in the Americas. Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1993.

Elkins, Stanley M. Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976.

Engerman, Stanley, and Eugene Genovese. Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitative Studies. Princeton: Princeton University Printing, 1975.

Fehrenbacher, Don. Slavery, Police force, and Politics. New York: Oxford Academy Press, 1981.

Franklin, John H. From Slavery to Freedom. New York: Knopf, 1988.

Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll. New York: Pantheon, 1974.

Genovese, Eugene D. The Political Economic system of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and Guild of the Slave South . Middletown, CT: Wesleyan, 1989.

Hindus, Michael Due south. Prison and Plantation. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980.

Margo, Robert, and Richard Steckel. "The Heights of American Slaves: New Evidence on Slave Nutrition and Health." Social Science History 6 (1982): 516-538.

Phillips, Ulrich B. American Negro Slavery: A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Command of Negro Labor equally Determined by the Plantation Government. New York: Appleton, 1918.

Stampp, Kenneth K. The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Antebellum South. New York: Knopf, 1956.

Steckel, Richard. "Birth Weights and Infant Mortality Among American Slaves." Explorations in Economic History 23 (1986): 173-98.

Walton, Gary, and Hugh Rockoff. History of the American Economy. Orlando: Harcourt Caryatid, 1994, affiliate 13.

Whaples, Robert. "Where Is At that place Consensus among American Economic Historians?" Journal of Economic History 55 (1995): 139-154.

Data can be found at
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United states of america, 1970, nerveless in ICPSR report number 0003, "Historical Demographic, Economic and Social Data: The United States, 1790-1970," located at http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/census/.

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