re lincoln slavery re top ten tricks you can play on the american voter in article apr rigel econ uga edu depken rigel econ uga edu craig depken writes in article mar isc br isc br com steveh thor isc br com steve hendricks writes the argument that slavery was a dying institution was often made by is historians mainly southerners who sought to divert attention from the institution as the central issue of the civil war in fact however the argument is specious at best more recent scholarship from the last years demonstrates rather conclusively that the cotton sugar tobacco economy and its reliance on slavery was increasingly dominant in the south prior to the civil war this is because the south did not receive the massive momentum of capital intensive growth that the northern states did compare the northern agricultural system with the southern and you will see a major difference in the capital to labor intensity capital and labor are one and the same in a slave economy except that capital doesn t reproduce quite as readily as slaves did slavery was a dying institution before the cotton gin yes but not in it is true that cotton suffered from price depression in the s the period used to claim that slavery would not have lasted in the south that is not the argument that i have heard it would not have lasted because the growth in the north would not have been sustained for much longer without spilling over to the southern states i e northern industry would have migrated capital to the southern states and with that would have come immigrant labor to the ports of the south e g charleston savannah mobile new orleans etc this would have put the breaks on the slave market and slavery would have been out moded by the capital intensity of competing agriculturalists those that insisted on keeping slaves because of their cruel hearts and hatred for black people would have been driven out of business simple capital to labor ratio read michael parkin microeconomics nd edition and any other basic economics book this assumes that the slave holder dominance over state governments would not have caused the passage of laws to keep out capital from the north since slave holders were prepared to do almost anything else to destroy free markets in order to maintain slavery i do not doubt that they would have passed laws to cripple any serious competitive threat thomas sowell s market and minorities argues that the maintenance of slavery and the costs it imposed on state and local governments discouraged not only capital formation but also outside capital investment in the southern states craig a depken ii clayton e cramer uunet pyramid optilink cramer my opinions all mine relations between people to be by mutual consent or not at all
