The Political Economy of Slavery. Eugene D. Genovese

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СКАЧАТЬ Slave South

      The South’s slave civilization could not forever coexist with an increasingly hostile, powerful, and aggressive Northern capitalism. On the one hand, the special economic conditions arising from the dependence on slave labor bound the South, in a colonial manner, to the world market. The concentration of landholding and slaveholding prevented the rise of a prosperous yeomanry and of urban centers. The inability to build urban centers restricted the market for agricultural produce, weakened the rural producers, and dimmed hopes for agricultural diversification. On the other hand, the same concentration of wealth, the isolated, rural nature of the plantation system, the special psychology engendered by slave ownership, and the political opportunity presented by the separation from England, converged to give the South considerable political and social independence. This independence was primarily the contribution of the slaveholding class, and especially of the planters. Slavery, while it bound the South economically, granted it the privilege of developing an aristocratic tradition, a disciplined and cohesive ruling class, and a mythology of its own.

      Aristocratic tradition and ideology intensified the South’s attachment to economic backwardness. Paternalism and the habit of command made the slaveholders tough stock, determined to defend their Southern heritage. The more economically debilitating their way of life, the more they clung to it. It was this side of things—the political hegemony and aristocratic ideology of the ruling class—rather than economic factors that prevented the South from relinquishing slavery voluntarily.

      As the free states stepped up their industrialization and as the westward movement assumed its remarkable momentum, the South’s economic and political allies in the North were steadily isolated. Years of abolitionist and free-soil agitation bore fruit as the South’s opposition to homesteads, tariffs, and internal improvements clashed more and more dangerously with the North’s economic needs. To protect their institutions and to try to lessen their economic bondage, the slaveholders slid into violent collision with Northern interests and sentiments. The economic deficiencies of slavery threatened to undermine the planters’ wealth and power. Such relief measures as cheap labor and more land for slave states (reopening the slave trade and territorial expansion) conflicted with Northern material needs, aspirations, and morality.²⁶ The planters faced a steady deterioration of their political and social power. Even if the relative prosperity of the 1850s had continued indefinitely, the slave states would have been at the mercy of the free, which steadily forged ahead in population growth, capital accumulation, and economic development. Any economic slump threatened to bring with it an internal political disaster, for the slaveholders could not rely on their middle and lower classes to remain permanently loyal.²⁷

      When we understand that the slave South developed neither a strange form of capitalism nor an undefinable agrarianism but a special civilization built on the relationship of master to slave, we expose the root of its conflict with the North. The internal contradictions in the South and the external conflict with the North placed the slaveholders hopelessly on the defensive with little to look forward to except slow strangulation. Their only hope lay in a bold stroke to complete their political independence and to use it to provide an expansionist solution for their economic and social problems. The ideology and psychology of the proud slaveholding class made surrender or resignation to gradual defeat unthinkable, for its fate, in its own eyes at least, was the fate of everything worth while in Western civilization.

      NOTES

      1 For a succinct statement of the first view see Frank L. Owsley, “The Irrepressible Conflict,” in Twelve Southerners, I’ll Take My Stand (New York, 1930), p. 74. One of the clearest statements of the second view is that of Thomas P. Govan, “Was the Old South Different?” JSH, XXI (Nov. 1955), 448.

      2 History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860 (2 vols.; Gloucester, Mass., 1958), I, 302.

      3 The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York, 1947), pp. 276 ff. The term “rational” is used in its strictly economic sense to indicate that production is proceeding in accordance with the most advanced methods to maximize profits.

      4 This simple observation has come under curious attack. Kenneth M. Stampp insists that the cost of purchasing a slave forms the equivalent of the free worker’s wage bill. See The Peculiar Institution (New York, 1956), pp. 403 ff. The initial outlay is the equivalent of part of the capitalist’s investment in fixed capital and constitutes what Ulrich B. Phillips called the “overcapitalization of labor” under slavery. The cost of maintaining a slave is only a small part of the free worker’s wage bill, but the difference in their productivity is probably greater than the difference in their cost under most conditions.

      5 The Pro-Slavery Argument (Charleston, S.C., 1852), p. 488.

      6 Blaise Pascel, Pensées (Modern Librarby ed.; New York, 1941), p. 105.

      7 This colonial dependence on the British and Northern markets did not end when slavery ended. Sharecropping and tenantry produced similar results. Since abolition occurred under Northern guns and under the program of a victorious, predatory outside bourgeoisie, instead of under internal bourgeois auspices, the colonial bondage of the economy was preserved, but the South’s political independence was lost.

      8 Govan, JSH, XXI (Nov. 1955), 448.

      9 Studies in the Development of Capitalism (New York, 1947), pp. 17 f. In the words of Gunnar Myrdal: “Trade by itself … rather tends to have backwash effects and to strengthen the forces maintaining stagnation or regression.” Rich Lands and Poor (New York, 1957), p. 53.

      10 An attempt was made by Frank L. Owsley and his students to prove that the Southern yeomanry was strong and prosperous. For a summary treatment see Plain Folk of the Old South (Baton Rouge, La., 1949). This view was convincingly refuted by Fabian Linden, “Economic Democracy in the Slave South: An Appraisal of Some Recent Views,” JNH, XXXI (April 1946), 140–89.

      11 Paul A. Baran, The Political Economy of Growth (New York, 1957), p. 194.

      12 The best introduction to this period of Western banking is the unpublished doctoral dissertation of Carter H. Golembe, “State Banks and the Economic Development of the West, 1830–1844,” Columbia University, 1952, esp. pp. 10, 82–91. Cf. Bray Hammond, “Long and Short Term Credit in Early American Banking,” QJE, XLIX (Nov. 1934), esp. p. 87.

      13 Slavery impeded white immigration by presenting Europeans with an aristocratic, caste-ridden society that scarcely disguised its contempt for the working classes. The economic opportunities in the North were, in most respects, far greater. When white labor was used in Southern factories, it was not always superior to slave labor. The incentives offered by the Northern economic and social system were largely missing; opportunities for acquiring skills were fewer; in general, productivity was much lower than in the North.

      14 Richard C. Wade’s recent Slavery in the Cities (New York, 1964) provides new support for these conclusions.

      15 William Gregg, Essays on Domestic Industry (first published in 1845; Graniteville, S.C., 1941), p. 4. Original emphasis.

      16 Consider the experience of the locomotive, paper, and cotton manufacturers as reported in: Carrol H. Quenzel, “The Manufacture of Locomotives and Cars in Alexandria in the 1850’s,” VMHB, LXII (April 1954), 182 ff; Ernest M. Lander, Jr., “Paper Manufacturing in South Carolina before the Civil War,” NCHR, XXIX (April 1952), 225 ff; Adelaide L. Fries, “One Hundred Years of Textiles in Salem,” NCHR, XXVII (Jan. 1950), 13.

      17 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (2 vols.; New York, 1945), I, 364.

      18 Achille Murat, СКАЧАТЬ