The value of slaves arose in part from the value of labor generally in the antebellum U. Scarce factors of production command economic rent, and labor was by far the scarcest available input in America. Moreover, a large proportion of the reward to owning and working slaves resulted from innovative labor practices. Masters found that treating people like machinery paid off handsomely. Antebellum slaveowners experimented with a variety of other methods to increase productivity. Hand ratings categorized slaves by age and sex and rated their productivity relative to that of a prime male field hand.
Masters also capitalized on the native intelligence of slaves by using them as agents to receive goods, keep books, and the like. 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 quickly. Some masters allowed slaves to keep part of the harvest or to work their own small plots.
In places, slaves could even sell their own crops. To prevent stealing, however, many masters limited the products that slaves could raise and sell, confining them to corn or brown 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 capital, enabling slaves to establish thriving businesses that often benefited their masters as well.
Yet these practices may have helped lead to the downfall of slavery, for they gave slaves a taste of freedom that left them longing for more. Masters profited from reproduction as well as production. Southern planters encouraged slaves to have large families because U.
But researchers have found little evidence of slave breeding; instead, masters encouraged slaves to live in nuclear or extended families for stability. Lest one think sentimentality triumphed on the Southern plantation, one need only recall the willingness of most masters to sell if the bottom line was attractive enough.
One element that contributed to the profitability of New World slavery was the African heritage of slaves. Africans, more than indigenous Americans, were accustomed to the discipline of agricultural practices and knew metalworking. Some scholars surmise that Africans, relative to Europeans, could better withstand tropical diseases and, unlike Native Americans, also had some exposure to the European disease pool.
Perhaps the most distinctive feature of Africans, however, was their skin color. Because they looked different from their masters, their movements were easy to monitor. Denying slaves education, property ownership, contractual rights, and other things enjoyed by those in power was simple: one needed only to look at people to ascertain their likely status. Using color was a low-cost way of distinguishing slaves from free persons. For this reason, the colonial practices that freed slaves who converted to Christianity quickly faded away.
Deciphering true religious beliefs is far more difficult than establishing skin color. Other slave societies have used distinguishing marks like brands or long hair to denote slaves, yet color is far more immutable and therefore better as a cheap way of keeping slaves separate. Skin color, of course, can also serve as a racist identifying mark even after slavery itself disappears. Slavery never generated superprofits, because people always had the option of putting their money elsewhere.
Nevertheless, investment in slaves offered a rate of return — about 10 percent — 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.
So slavery was profitable; was it an efficient way of organizing the workforce? On this question, considerable controversy remains. Slavery might well have profited masters, but only 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 burdensome. Fogel and Engerman claimed that slaves kept about ninety percent of what they produced.
Because these scholars also 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, current estimates suggest that the typical slave received only about fifty percent of the extra output that he or she produced. Gavin Wright called attention as well to the difference between the short run and the long run. Although slavery might have seemed an efficient means of production at a point in time, it tied masters to a certain system of labor which might not have adapted quickly to changed economic circumstances.
This argument has some merit. Consequently, commercial and service industries lagged in the South. The region also had far less rail transportation than the North. Yet many plantations used the most advanced technologies of the day, and certain innovative commercial and insurance practices appeared first in transactions involving slaves.
What is more, although the South fell behind the North and Great Britain in its level of manufacturing, it compared favorably to other advanced countries of the time. In sum, no clear consensus emerges as to whether the antebellum South created a standard of living comparable to that of the North or, if it did, whether it could have sustained it.
As such, it was undeniably evil. Yet, because slaves constituted valuable property, their masters had ample incentives to take care of them. And, by protecting the property rights of masters, slave law necessarily sheltered the persons embodied within.
In a sense, the apologists for slavery were right: slaves sometimes fared better than free persons because powerful people had a stake in their well-being. But 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 class of free citizens. Yet the root of slavery is coercion. By its very nature, slavery involves involuntary transactions. Slaves are property, whereas free laborers are persons who make choices at times constrained, of course about the sort of work they do and the number of hours they work.
The behavior of former slaves after abolition clearly reveals that they cared strongly about the manner of their work and valued their non-work time more highly than masters did.
Even the most benevolent former masters in the U. South found it impossible to entice their former chattels back into gang work, even with large wage premiums. Nor could they persuade women back into the labor force: many female ex-slaves simply chose to stay at home.
In the end, perhaps slavery is an economic phenomenon only because slave societies fail to account for the incalculable costs borne by the slaves themselves.
For studies pertaining to the economics of slavery , see particularly Aitken, Hugh, editor. Did Slavery Pay? Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, Barzel, Yoram. Conrad, Alfred H. The Economics of Slavery and Other Studies. Chicago: Aldine, David, Paul A. New York: Oxford University Press, Fogel, Robert W. New York: Little, Brown, Galenson, David W.
New York: Cambridge University Press, Kotlikoff, Laurence. Ransom, Roger L. Vedder, Richard K. Wright, Gavin. New York: Norton, Yasuba, Yasukichi. For accounts of slave trading and sales, see Bancroft, Frederic. Slave Trading in the Old South. New York: Ungar, Tadman, Michael. Speculators and Slaves. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, For discussion of the profession of slave catchers, see Campbell, Stanley W. The Slave Catchers.
To read about slaves in industry and urban areas, see Dew, Charles B. Slavery in the Antebellum Southern Industries. Bethesda: University Publications of America, Goldin, Claudia D. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Starobin, Robert. Industrial Slavery in the Old South. For discussions of masters and overseers, see Oakes, James. New York: Knopf, Scarborough, William K. On indentured servitude, see Galenson, David.
Galenson, David. Grubb, Farley. Menard, Russell R. On slave law, see Fede, Andrew. Finkelman, Paul. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, Slavery, Race, and the American Legal System , New York: Garland, Flanigan, Daniel J.
The Criminal Law of Slavery and Freedom, Morris, Thomas D. Schafer, Judith K. Tushnet, Mark V. Princeton: Princeton University Press, Wahl, Jenny B. Other useful sources include Berlin, Ira, and Philip D. Morgan, eds. London: Frank Cass, Berlin, Ira, and Philip D. Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, Elkins, Stanley M. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Engerman, Stanley, and Eugene Genovese. Genovese, Eugene D. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan, Hindus, Michael S. Prison and Plantation.
Margo, Robert, and Richard Steckel. Phillips, Ulrich B. New York: Appleton, Stampp, Kenneth M. Steckel, Richard. Walton, Gary, and Hugh Rockoff. History of the American Economy. Orlando: Harcourt Brace, , chapter Whaples, Robert.
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Newsletters To join the newsletters or submit a posting go to click here. Jenny Bourne, Carleton College Slavery is fundamentally an economic phenomenon. Slavery in the North Colonial slavery had a slow start, particularly in the North. Slavery in the South Throughout colonial and antebellum history, U. TABLE 2 Population of the South by type Year White Free Nonwhite Slave 1,, 32, , 1,, 61, , 2,, 97, 1,, 2,, , 1,, 3,, , 1,, 4,, , 2,, 6,, , 3,, 8,, , 3,, Source: Historical Statistics of the U.
Truth : African-Americans have been free in this country for less time than they were enslaved. Do the math: Blacks have been free for years which means that most Americans are two to three generations removed from slavery. However, former slaveholding families have built their legacies on the institution and generated wealth that African-Americans have not been privy to because enslaved labor was forced; segregation maintained wealth disparities; and overt and covert discrimination limited African-American recovery efforts.
Economists and historians have examined detailed aspects of the enslaved experience for as long as slavery existed. Recent publications related to slavery and capitalism explore economic aspects of cotton production and offer commentary on the amount of wealth generated from enslaved labor.
My own work enters this conversation looking at the value of individual slaves and the ways enslaved people responded to being treated as a commodity. They were bought and sold just like we sell cars and cattle today. They were gifted, deeded and mortgaged the same way we sell houses today. They were itemized and insured the same way we manage our assets and protect our valuables.
Enslaved people were valued at every stage of their lives, from before birth until after death. Their values decreased on a quarter scale from three-fourths hands to one-fourth hands, to a rate of zero, which was typically reserved for elderly or differently abled bondpeople another term for slaves.
Guy and Andrew, two prime males sold at the largest auction in US History in , commanded different prices. Slavery was an extremely diverse economic institution; one that extrapolated unpaid labor out of people in a variety of settings from small single crop farms and plantations to urban universities. This diversity is also reflected in their prices.
Enslaved people understood they were treated as commodities. But the passengers on this particular trip took an unprecedented, forced turn northward. They captured around 50—60 enslaved passengers and transferred them to their own ships, the White Lion and Treasurer. The English ships set a new course for the British North American colonies. The privateers sold more than 20 Africans in exchange for provisions.
At least one person, a woman named Angelo or Angela,was taken to nearby Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in North America. The labor-intensive nature of life in the British North American colonies, along with a high mortality rate, made the region hungry for workers.
Tobacco farming in Virginia was an especially lucrative business, but it required enormous amounts of cheap labor, much of which was performed by indentured servants during the s. During the mids, Virginia courts gradually created laws that trapped Africans and their offspring into lifelong slavery. Beginning in , international slave traders brought increasing numbers of enslaved Africans to North America.
A few came from the West Indies rather than directly from Africa, but most came from western Africa, largely from the coastal and nearby interior regions.
More than , enslaved people arrived during the last half-century before United States independence. Natural increase boosted their numbers. About , enslaved people lived in the United States when it became a nation. The vast majority of enslaved people lived in Southern states, where tobacco and cotton were important crops. Importation of enslaved people dropped temporarily during and after the United States Revolutionary War.
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