* Parenthetical numbers represent percentage of local population.
† Includes 18 lifetime apprentices in New Jersey.
‡ In 1785; not included in regional or nation totals.
sound economic reasons. With the dearth of labor in the
West and the enormous profits to be made on cotton exports,
planters worked the slaves that they could get as hard as they
could. In short, there were undoubtedly important differences in the character of slavery in the regions that have been
distinguished in this essay, and these differences of character
changed over time.
In broad terms, the situation of slaves worsened from
North to South and from East to West. In the North, where
commercial cultivation of cash crops was never the focus of
the economy, slavery remained relatively marginal (although
the slave population rose by 1790, just before slavery was
legally prohibited, to around 20 percent of the total population in some regions of states such as New York and Rhode
Island). Slaves were used in domestic service, in skilled crafts,
and as day labor. Some slaves were also used in larger commercial projects—they cultivated wheat along the banks of
the Hudson River or raised horses and dairy cows in Rhode
Island—but there is little evidence in these cases of an extensive use of the harsh discipline and cruel punishments employed throughout the South. Slaveholdings were typically
small, rarely exceeding five, and slaves worked with or under
their owners and usually enjoyed a significant degree of autonomy in arranging their lives outside the workplace—
choosing a spouse and raising a family. The conditions of
work were generally good by comparison with those in the
South, and the proportion of free blacks was comparatively
high and rose continually through the postindependence period (already reaching over 40 percent of the total Northern
black population by 1790).
In the latter part of the eighteenth century, the obvious
implications of the War of Independence, fought in the name
of a right of all men to “liberty,” had a deep impact on Northern views of slavery. Although the founding fathers (many of
them among the largest slaveholders of their time) compromised with powerful slaveowner interests in drafting the
Constitution and so declined to constitutionally abolish slavery, they did indicate an intention to banish the slave trade in
20 years’ time (a number of slave states in the meantime acted
on their own to do this, including Virginia in 1778). The War
of Independence produced a reorientation of attitude in the
North, which led to laws outlawing slavery in all Northern
states by 1804 (although some of these included gradualist
features).
In the Upper South, as Table 2 indicates, slaves typically
lived in larger holdings than in the North but distinctly
smaller holdings than in the Deep South (around half as
large), especially once Louisiana (purchased in 1803), with its
large sugar plantations, is factored in. The smaller size of
holdings reflects the fact that tobacco, the predominant cash
crop in the Upper South, could be cultivated successfully in
small or medium-sized plots. In general, tobacco farming was
less labor-intensive than rice or cotton cultivation, and it did
not expose laborers to the health risks associated with working in rice fields in the midsummer. Most of these slaves
worked in small groups either directly or indirectly under the
supervision of their owners and thus were less often and less
thoroughly subject to professional overseers and drivers. The
smaller scale of production did not demand the rigid systems
of rules characteristic of large plantations and the harsh punishments associated with those rules. Moreover, in the second
half of the eighteenth century, land exhaustion led to a tobacco crisis, and many planters turned all or part of their
fields toward the cultivation of other, even less laborintensive crops, such as wheat. On average, the food and habitation provided for slaves were simple but adequate and certainly better than the crowded collective dwellings and more
regimented life further south and west. Finally, as the overall
slave population shifted from transported Africans to nativeborn slaves, with slaves thus becoming more fully socialized
into the life of the Upper South and gaining the confidence of
their owners, slaves were frequently allowed a good deal of independence in organizing their personal affairs.
Finally, Elkins in particular makes a convincing case that
slavery in the Deep South, both in the East and especially in
the West, was particularly harsh, although the further claim
that it was worse than the forms of slavery that developed in
South America and the Caribbean remains problematic. It is
difficult to systematically quantify these differences, but extensive anecdotal evidence suggests that demands on slaves
were greater, life was more rigidly and intrusively organized,
and punishments were more severe and more frequently employed in the large slaveholdings of the Deep South. In general, the intensity of economic exploitation of the slave-labor
systems seems to have been comparatively higher, especially
in the early period of western expansion.
As slavery in the South became increasingly isolated
through the later antebellum period, however, the most harsh
and brutal features of the system were moderated or at least
de-emphasized, and the distinctive characteristics of American slavery began to coalesce into the “peculiar institution”
Table 2 Median holdings of slaves in the South by state
1790 1850 1860
Louisiana 38.9 49.3
South Carolina 36.2 38.2 38.9
Mississippi 33.0 35.0
Alabama 29.9 33.4
Florida 28.5 28.4
Georgia 26.0 26.4
Arkansas 18.4 23.4
North Carolina 13.3 18.6 19.3
Virginia 17.4 18.1 18.8
Texas 14.9 17.6
Tennessee 15.2 15.1
Maryland 15.5 12.2 14.0
Kentucky 10.3 10.4
Missouri 8.6 8.3
Delaware 5.7 6.3
Total Deep South 30.9 32.5
Total Upper South 15.3 15.6
Total South 20.6 20.3
Source: Lewis C. Gray, History of Agriculture in the Southern United
States to 1860 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institute of Washington,
1933), pp. 530–531. Reprinted with permission.
that the South defended in the Civil War. To begin with,
Southerners found themselves increasingly alone. In 1750
slavery extended throughout the American colonies and indeed through virtually all of the New World. By 1850, however, the North had done away with slavery, and in the Western Hemisphere, only Brazil and the Spanish islands of Cuba
and Puerto Rico retained it. At the same time, a strong abolition movement developed both in the North and, to a much
more limited extent, in the South (mostly among Quakers).
Finally, two great religious revivals that swept across the
South instigated growing concern with the spiritual condition and humane treatment of the slave population. Both the
Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s and a second wave
of religious revivalism that ran through the South in the
1770s and 1780s emphasized the “equality of all souls before
God” and thus led, by the turn of the century, to an increasingly widespread concern with the moral implications of
slavery; in some cases, they even led to direct antislavery agitation in the South itself (particularly among Methodists and
Baptists in the Upper South). This last development, however, should not be overexaggerated. Explicit abolitionism
never developed into a significant mainstream movement
within the South itself. Nonetheless, as a result of the increasing isolation of slavery in the American South, the widespread calls for abolition in the North, and at least the emergence of doubts and concerns about slavery in the South,
Southern slaveowners (who never made up a majority of the
white population, even in the South) were increasingly called
upon to explicitly defend their “peculiar institution.”
These external pressures on slavery were complemented
by a number of internal developments, and together, they
generated a gradual shift through the antebellum period
from an aggressive and nakedly exploitative form of slavery
to a more moderate and paternalistic slavery across the
South, although important regional disparities in terms of
harshness remained. In the first place, the slave population itself was becoming more and more pervasively Americanborn, particularly following the ban of the slave trade in
1804. As Fogel and Engerman argued, the foreign-born proportion of the black population in America had fallen to
around 20 percent by 1800, and it fell off further as imports
were banned. American-born slaves did not generally require
the same extreme measures to “break their spirits” as many of
the adult Africans who had been sold into slavery and transported to America. Their socialization typically occurred
more smoothly and gradually while they were growing up,
and although a background regime of discipline was certainly
deemed necessary, flogging (or whipping) generally proved
adequate. Punishment did not need to take the flagrant and
brutal forms, such as branding, castration, amputation, and
hanging, that were often required to “break in” new slaves or
to make examples of those who refused to accept their new
status. Finally, the passage of the Eighth Amendment to the
U.S. Constitution, prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment, may have also contributed to the progressive shift away
from the harshest forms of slave discipline.
A second distinctive feature of American slavery also influenced the later antebellum character of slavery in the
South. Southern owners were typically resident owners, and
even in the larger slaveholdings of the Deep South, as more
slaves were born in the States, they increasingly knew and
were personally known by their owners. The Southern slaveowners in the late antebellum period continually emphasized
their care and concern for their slaves, and it was common to
hear a slaveowner describe these slaves as “my people.” Indeed, slaveowners’ professions of “love” for their people filled
the literature of the time. Moreover, slavery was increasingly
defended as a tutelary situation, which above all benefited the
slaves themselves. No doubt, much of this talk of care and
concern was hypocritical hyperbole, all of which never
stopped most slaveowners from extracting extensive profit
from the labor of their property. Yet it is important that many
Southern slaveowners made at least superficial efforts to improve the condition of “their people” (although often in a
manner designed to reinforce their dependence on their masters), either by improving their habitations, food, clothing,
and skills; by rewarding them when they performed noteworthy services; by allowing them greater leisure and more
autonomy over their leisure time; or by assigning them
greater responsibilities when warranted (often involving the
supervision or direction of other slaves).
There is evidence, then, of a general improvement in the
material conditions of Southern slaves, particularly in the late
antebellum period. In some cases, indeed, their material condition may have compared favorably (particularly in the
Upper South) with that of industrial workers in the North, as
Fogel and Engerman insisted. Thus, it is ironic that the war to
end slavery may have been fought at just the time when slavery was reaching its least onerous stage. The point that must,
however, be borne in mind is that slavery remained slavery—
a degraded and morally repugnant condition, regardless of
any marginal improvements in slaves’ material welfare.
The growing strength of abolitionism in the North along
with the decline of the Whig Party opened the way in the
1850s for the emergence of the new Republican Party, with
strong antislavery sensibilities. Drawing on the growing concentration of population in the industrialized North, as well
as division and disaffection in the South, the Republican
Party presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln, defeated
Stephen Douglas, the (Northern) Democratic candidate, in
the 1860 election. Despite Lincoln’s assurances that, to preserve the integrity of the Union, he would refrain from outlawing slavery, seven Southern states had seceded from the
Union by the time of his inauguration in March 1861. Then,
on April 12, 1861, South Carolina fired on Fort Sumter. The
Civil War, which would ultimately lead to the elimination of
American slavery, had begun.
Conclusion
With a basic historical and regional sense of the development
of American slavery, it may now be productive to return to
some of continuingly controversial questions with which this
essay began. Why did the slave system of labor, for example,
embed itself so deeply in the American South while gradually
disappearing in virtually every other New World colony? The
answer must be, as is so often the case, a combination of factors: the continuously high demand for and corresponding
scarcity of labor throughout America’s colonial and antebellum history; the emergence and rapid growth of a manageable population of native-born slaves; the commercial success
of American slave-based cultivation; and the continuing dispersion of slaves among a majority white population, which
militated against any organized, armed resistance. All of these
factors contribute to explaining the resilience and longevity
of American slavery.
Did American slaves live in materially worse conditions
than free industrial workers in the North? Did slaves benefit
substantially from the value that they produced? The answer
here is that sometimes they benefited, and sometimes they
were materially better off, depending on which regions and
historical periods of slavery are under consideration and
which industrial workers, living where and when, are taken
as a basis of comparison. Slaves in the postindependence
North or late antebellum South may have done moderately
well on some such material comparisons, and this finding
may also help to explain why American slavery survived for
so long. But even where they did compare favorably, the
comparison only reveals a misleadingly tiny aspect of the
slaves’ overall condition. Slaves were the explicit and legal
property of others, an indefensibly degraded moral condition that has no comparator among Northern industrial
workers.
Was American slavery comparatively humane, at least relative to other New World systems of slavery? In general, it
probably was, and this was likely another factor contributing
to its longevity, although results would likely vary somewhat
depending on region and period (if not according to individual owners). Early American slavery in the low lands of Georgia or the sugar plantations of early-nineteenth-century
Louisiana may not have been noticeably more humane than
slavery in Bermuda, for example. Finally, American slavery
ultimately outlasted slavery almost everywhere else in the
New World, and it is unlikely that it was more humane than
any free system of contract labor.
Was the American slave-labor system inefficient in comparison with “free” agricultural labor? Historians Alfred
Conrad and John Meyer reversed much of the received wisdom about low slave-labor productivity and profitability by
showing that the rate of return produced by an average male
slave on Southern antebellum plantations was typically between 5 and 8 percent of his initial cost annually (falling to
2 to 5 percent in the exhausted lands of the eastern seaboard
and rising as high as 10 to 13 percent on the best lands in
Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina), with a slightly
lower rate for female slaves. They further argued that these
numbers compare favorably, on average, with the vast bulk
of both agriculture and industrial concerns in the North.
This analysis helps to explain the rapid economic growth of
the antebellum South. Fogel and Engerman later revisited
Conrad and Meyer’s analysis in detail, and in what probably
remains the most comprehensive and compelling examination of slave-labor profitability, they determined that Conrad and Meyer had somewhat underestimated the level of
profitability for male and especially female slaves. Their revised conclusion was an approximately 10 percent aggregate
rate of annual return for both male and female slaves. Again,
this rate compared favorably with both successful agricultural and industrial concerns in the North. Although Fogel
and Engerman’s conclusions are still disputed by many
scholars and may legitimately be accused of slanting far
more to the antebellum than the colonial period, a consensus seems to be emerging that slave cultivation was generally
far more profitable than was previously thought and was
probably not only a better investment than free Northern
agriculture but also likely comparable with some more successful industrial investments.
Was American slavery moribund by the eve of the Civil
War, or was it dynamic and expanding? Between the War of
Independence and the Civil War, nine new states adopted the
system of slave labor, and vast new territories came under its
control. Slavery virtually monopolized the cultivation of
America’s biggest and most valuable export, cotton. In 1854
Congress’s Kansas-Nebraska Act opened up Northern states,
which had been closed to slavery by the Northwest Ordinance. Meanwhile, the Southern economy was growing much
faster than the economies of England, France, or Brazil
throughout the late antebellum period. There can be little
question, then, that slavery was not only healthy in America
in the 1850s but also rapidly growing. Indeed, it was the
threat posed by the rapid expansion of slavery that galvanized
the North to take the drastic action of electing a Republican
president. Lincoln himself argued, in a speech in Springfield,
Illinois, on June 16, 1858, that the United States had to
quickly confront the slavery question once and for all, or all
would ultimately succumb to its temptations—the Union
had to be “all slave or all free,” for “a house divided cannot
stand.”
Finally, setting aside the issue of its morality, was slavery at
least economically rational? Unquestionably, it was. Slavery
was stable and highly profitable and could, at times at least,
be arguably beneficial in a material sense to those subjected
to it (in comparison to comparable free labor). The market
could coexist as easily with a slave-labor system as it could
with a contract-labor system in the North. The choice to invest in slavery, to practice slavery, and to legalize and defend
slavery was fully rational in economic terms.
The moral of this long story, then, is simply this: The
American experience with slavery illustrates that the market
is morally neutral—it can reward and encourage morally abhorrent institutions as easily as morally laudable ones. The
market itself is in no sense a dependable moral guide. Attention must be paid to the way that culture, politics, and law
shape the dynamics of the market, and the consequences of
market interactions must be carefully examined to avoid such
disasters in the future.
—Avery Plaw
References
Berlin, Ira. Slaves without Masters: The Free Negro in the
Antebellum South. New York: Vintage Books, 1974.
Elkins, Stanley M. Slavery: A Problem in American
Institutional and Intellectual Life. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1959.
Fogel, Robert William. Without Consent or Contract: The
Rise and Fall of American Slavery. New York: W. W.
Norton, 1989.
Fogel, Robert William, and Stanley L. Engerman, eds. Time
on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery.
London: Little, Brown, 1974.
———. Time on the Cross, Volume 2: Evidence and
Methods—A Supplement. London: Little, Brown, 1974.
———. Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of
American Slavery—Technical Papers: Markets and
Production, Volume 1. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992.
———. Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of
American Slavery: Conditions of Slave Life and the
Transition to Freedom—Technical Papers, Volume 2. New
York: W. W. Norton, 1992.
Fogel, Robert William, Ralph A. Galantine, and Richard L.
Manning, eds. Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and
Fall of American Slavery—Evidence and Methods. New
York: W. W. Norton, 1992.
Gray, Lewis C. History of Agriculture in the Southern United
States to 1860. Gloucester, MA: P. Smith, 1958.
Gutman, Herbert G. Slavery and the Numbers Game: A
Critique of Time on the Cross. Chicago: University of
Illinois Press, 1975.
Kolchin, Peter. Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian
Serfdom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
Belknap Press, 1987.
———. American Slavery: 1619–1687. New York: Hill and
Wang, 1993.
Phillips, Ulrich B. American Negro Slavery. Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1966.
White, John, and Ralph Willett, eds. Slavery in the American
South. London: Longman, 1970.