Slavery And The United States Economy

Running Head: SLAVERY AND THE UNITED STATES ECONOMY 1

Slavery and the United States Economy

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SLAVERY AND THE UNITED STATES ECONOMY 2

Slavery and the United States Economy

The book Time on the Cross: the economics of American Negro Slavery came into

play to give a completely different and more comprehensive interpretation of the American

history of slavery and the economic effects that it to the economy of the country and the

slaves themselves. Lately, researchers have launched scathing attacks on the reviews through

very many strategic bad reviews that have left the book flawed even though it is still very

important to some readers in the ways it presents the economics of slavery. The major theme

of the book primarily revises the history as well as the economics of slavery while the second

one disputes the existent scientific methods of slave history that were never elaborate.

According to the authors, the economic advantages of slavery in the United States

were numerous and far-reaching contrary to what other authors posited in their writings.

Interestingly, Fogel and Engerman asserts that the negative impacts of the slavery were far

much less vicious on the black culture and the personality of the blacks than it has always

been assumed. It has been always been known to many according to the reservations by many

historians that slavery severely affected the personality of the slaves who were basically

blacks apart from equally severely affecting their culture and their traditions. Contextually,

this is the assertion that did not go well with most scholars majorly those that have been

forced to cast doubts on their knowledge of the same their coaxing them to scathingly attack

the Time on the Cross. Maintaining the above reservations means that according to the joint

authors, slavery was not as immoral as it has been perceived because both the master and the

slave derived convergent economic interest from it. It was just as rational as any other

business enterprise would be because the Negro slaves economically gained from it as their

masters. To support their controversial argument, Fogel and Engerman maintains that in

rational businesses, both the interests of the business owner and those of the worker do

converge erasing any elements of mistreatment that might result. It is the same case with the

SLAVERY AND THE UNITED STATES ECONOMY 3

United States slavery, where the slaves had to work hard to get food and shelter from the

master who invested heavily on such to get value in terms of service or workforce from the

slaves. The two entities existed from the perspective of the master being a rational investor

with the slave as his valuable property, so there was no chance for the rational individual to

brutally mistreat his valued property because in that case, he might end up losing the property

either through death or through escape. Additionally, production might lower because of

protests. The two critically condemned those with the contrary and harsher views of the

slavery saying that they are strategically perverting the history of the blacks. In their view,

these individual sadists are serving to poison the existing race relationship mainly between

the African Americans and the whites by making them think that they were purposefully

mistreated and denied all the cultural development opportunities. The book came at the right

time to help save the situation because of the hard lines that were between the race

interactions a factor that unfavourably segregated people along race directions (Fogel &

Engerman, 1974).

Slavery created the spirit of hard work for the Negro Americans, this worked to

increase their economy tremendously, and that of the new land-United States. The book

typically recounts that the slave fields where the slaves worked and lived were a no lazy area

in that they were always put to work to be very productive both for themselves, the masters

and for the country, which badly wanted the economy to expand through agricultural

production. It is recorded in the book that the slaves were extremely very efficient,

hardworking compared to the white Americans, and this came to their advantage when they

finally won their freedom. They maintained the spirit of the hard work in the fields to helps

raise their economic status and indirectly that of the nation. It is written that the slaves were

the key players during the American industrial revolution and the industrial renaissance. They

provided very cheap and free labor in the industries that were set up in the countries major

SLAVERY AND THE UNITED STATES ECONOMY 4

cities and states that allowed slavery helping the industries to boom and grow tremendously

since there was labor no costs on them. They made maximum profits. The main industry that

gained remarkably from the slave trade was the agricultural production and manufacturing

industries as well as the tobacco industry in the south.

During the time that slavery was a hit in the United States, the economy of the nation

mainly depended on agriculture and agricultural production. Some of the main crops that

were planted in plantation included cotton, tobacco, rice and sugarcane amongst others. Such

plantations were mainly concentrated in the southern states like Virginia, Georgia, Missouri,

and Kentucky where slavery was rampant noting the north had strongly abolished trade. The

farm owners bought the slaves to work on these plantations free of charge. The slaves solved

the problem of the shortage of labor in the region and the cost incurred in labor since it is

recorded that the white laborers were costly to hire since they were protected by the

constitution from any form of mistreatment (Inikori, 1992). Additionally, they could easily

quit working, they were constitutionally mandated to hold strike under poor working

conditions and this had the farm owners to put up with. The slaves proved the best bet that

could provide the much-needed labor at very affordable and manageable cost to this farms

and constituent industries with no legal immunity accorded to them. For this reason, the

industry grew in an unprecedented scales and the agricultural production in the south

surpassed the imagined height leading to a subsequent growth in the economy of the whole

nation. Such growths were mainly witnessed in the south than in north, which had

vehemently abolished slavery on accounts of human rights making the slave be drifted to the

south to work in the available tobacco, rice, maize and sugarcane plantations. The entry of

slaves into the American soil in this context meant that the labor in the country had tangibly

improved, and the plantation owners increased the production of export crops at extremely

very low cost. The result was the increased influx of foreign currencies because of the

SLAVERY AND THE UNITED STATES ECONOMY 5

increased exportation of agricultural products that were produced almost freely. Trade

between America and other countries that consumed its exports across the Atlantic and the

Pacific improved pushing the economy of the country to wholesomely grow unprecedentedly.

Many historians like Roger Ransom have surfaced to support the assertion of the authors that

slavery was not cruelty to the Negro American rather a mutual venture. He argues that the

masters had to treat their property carefully to maximize on the output they realized from

their hard work. According to him, the masters could not extract sufficient labor from the

slaves if they did not accord some security and thus the agricultural and the industrial sectors

could not have realized the recorded tremendous growth and effect to the economy (Morgan,

2000).

In conclusion, it can be noted that slavery was important in all the economic aspects

of the country irrespective of the job or the activity they indulged in. It is true because the

value the slaves produced in the farms in the south and the industries in the north was very

much higher than what the slave owners reportedly paid to own and maintain them. The slave

owners had to maintain a good reputation with the slaves themselves by treating them well,

according to Fogel and Engerman, to get the best out of them. The two maintained that

because slavery was like any other business venture, the owners to protect the property so as

not to lose them citing it is because of this that the effects of slavery were far much less

vicious that had been assumed.

SLAVERY AND THE UNITED STATES ECONOMY 6

References

Fogel, R. W., & Engerman, S. L. (1974). Time on the cross.

Inikori, J. E. (1992). The Atlantic slave trade: Effects on economies, societies, and peoples in

Africa, the Americas, and Europe. Durham [u.a.: Duke Univ. Press.

Morgan, K. (2000). Slavery, Atlantic trade and the British economy: 1660-1800. Cambridge

[u.a.: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Robert W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman (1974) Time on the Cross-: the economics of

American Negro slavery, Little Brown, and Co.

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