With the Civil War, the United States destroyed an economic system that was holding the country back and allowed Northern capitalists to lead the country to much greater prosperity. The progressive historians of the early twentieth century used this inefficiency argument in their analyses of slavery, contrasting the unproductive slave South with Northern industrialism and capitalism.
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These arguments informed the Republican Party’s view that free labor was superior and more productive than slavery. During his travels to the slave states in the 1850s, Olmsted produced numerous publications arguing that slavery made the South inefficient and economically backward in comparison to the North. In the United States, the roots of this viewpoint go back at least to Frederick Law Olmsted’s writings.
Slavery was long considered non-capitalist because historians asserted that it was economically unproductive. They’ve asked questions inquiring whether capitalism and slavery are compatible, what role slavery played in capitalist development, and probably most infamously: Is slavery capitalism? Given the booming popularity of histories of capitalism, the time is right for a reassessment of slavery and its relationship to capitalism. H-Slavery looks forward to revising this guide further in the future.įor over a century now, historians of the United States have been wrestling with the relationship between capitalism and slavery. Where substantial recommendations were taken, contributors are mentioned in the appropriate sections. The author and H-Slavery gratefully acknowledge the input from H-Slavery’s subscribers. This revised version was published to this page on July 28, 2015.
A preliminary draft circulated to the subscribers of H-Slavery on Jfor feedback both are available here. student in history at Fordham University. This topical guide on “Capitalism and Slavery in the United States” was authored by Stephen Leccese, a Ph.D. Capitalism and Slavery in the United States (Topical Guide)
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