The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

Regarding the Civil War, many historians assume that “the South was a premodern economic system, and therefore that its defeat was inevitable,” that the South was, as one contemporary abolitionist observes, “a Troy destined to fall” (345). This forces the question: “What sort of madness would prompt supposedly conservative planters to start a war that would hasten the collapse of their own walls?” (345). To answer this requires recognizing that in the decade leading up to the war, and despite the financial panic of the 1840s, Southerners do not see “their own system as something antique, destined to fall before the onrushing future,” but instead perceive “themselves as modern people […] running a highly successful, innovative sector of a world economy that [is] growing faster than ever before” (346). They are continually “pushing for efficiency” (349) and, despite their previous setbacks, “[i]n the 1850s, southern production of cotton double[s] from 2 million to 4 million bales, with no sign of either slowing down or of quenching the industrial West’s thirst for raw materials” (350).

After the “dept-and-repudiation crisis of the early 1840s,” southerners no longer have the privileged relationship with international financial sectors from which they had previously benefited, which costs them “the control over the flow of credit and repayment that enslavers had once been able to exert” (352). However, a “new financial ecology” is introduced in the form of “factors”: firms that mediate “between cotton producers and the world market, channeling credit and taking the immediate risk of lending” (353). Although enslavers do not have as much control as they had once enjoyed, this new system still “finance[s] massive new expansions in the southwestern United States while also allowing world capital markets to take advantage of the massive collateral held by enslavers” (352). With this new financial system, ongoing demand, and growing efficiency, the slave-dependent cotton industry remains highly profitable and, by 1860, seven of the eight wealthiest states in the United States are those “created by cotton’s march west and south,” while the eighth, Connecticut, “profit[s] disproportionately” (350) from the industrial processing and sale of cotton. Moreover, southerners are well aware that their economy is reliant on cotton and that cotton production is reliant on slavery. They also recognize that the North is growing in power and prosperity and is exhibiting a growing antislavery bias that threatens to stop not only the expansion of the slave frontier but maybe the institution of slavery itself.

With the Compromise of 1850 failing to “clearly permit future expansion” (346), southern enslavers see their financial futures as dependent on their ability to get “slavery expansion written into the laws of the nation and the covenants of its political parties, enforced in the territories with executive policy, and stated as constitutional fact by the Supreme Court” (346). They are beginning to believe that if they cannot secure this commitment to the continuation and expansion of slavery then they will have to embrace another path, “one in which the region as a whole secede[s] in order to gain control of expansion for themselves” (347). Although “in the 1850s, the borders of slavery’s empire [are] not expanding” (359), there is still internal growth. Some of this, for example, is the result of “bootstrapping white men on the make” (362) continuing to move slaves into Texas. At the same time, other growth comes from some of “the most heavily capitalized men in the country” achieving “a kind of superplanter status” by establishing vast, highly-productive plantations in Mississippi, which they operate “as if by remote control” (360), rather than settling in the area. However, enslavers know that further expansion of slavery’s borders will soon be necessary.

One key site for expansion is Cuba, “the one jewel yet to be pried from the crown of the Spanish Empire” that has “become to sugar what Mississippi now [is] to cotton” (354). Annexing Cuba would not only greatly extend the slave frontier, bringing a huge increase in production and profits, but also, “[b]ecause of Cuba’s size and population, it could be carved into multiple states, each one sending proslavery senators and representatives to Washington to rebalance Congress” (356). In 1848, Polk’s administration had “offered Spain’s impoverished government $100 million for the island” (355) but had been turned down. In the 1850s, “southern enslavers and northern allies” (356), including “Cuban exiles, Wall Street money, New York publicists, and Mississippi power-brokers” (357), support “extralegal tactics” (356) that are “intended to overthrow the island’s Spanish colonial government” (357), although again without success.  

It is not only Cuba that interests southerners intent on expanding slavery’s frontier. Pro-slavery politicians are keen to turn California into a slave state, where “about 1,000 African Americans [are] already enduring extremely well-regulated labor as slaves in the […] goldfields” (366), despite a state constitution that prohibits slavery. Likewise, there are plots “to acquire land on the other side of the Mexican border” (366). These schemes are fueled by speculation about a southern route for a new transcontinental railway. However, Mexico “refuse[s] to sell more than a fraction” of the land required and, in 1853, “congressional opponents [block] federal funding for a southern intercontinental railroad line” (367). In response, [a]dvocates of the southern route now [vow] to spoil the northern ones” (367) and the debate rages on, with various factions using the railroad as a playing piece in ongoing conflicts over the future of slavery.

The debates around these and other conflicts reshape the political environment. The Democratic Party’s survival is increasingly reliant “on alliance behind the cause of expanding slavery” (358) even as “[n]orthern Democrats [strain] against party-line pressure” (372), particularly regarding the proposed “Kansas-Nebraska Bill,” which seeks to invalidate “the portions of the Missouri Act of 1820 that denied ‘the citizens of the several states and Territories’ the ‘liberty to take and hold their slaves within any of the Territories of the United States’” (370). The Whigs, meanwhile, “split along North-South lines and [collapse] in the fall midterm elections” (372) of 1853, heralding the end of “the two-party-system that [has] existed for the previous two decades” (372). A new group, the Republicans, become more prominent and are popular for their opposition to “the expansion of slavery both on moral grounds and because they [believe] the white man’s frontier should be unsullied by black slaves” (372).

In 1856, the case of Dred Scott, who is suing for his freedom and the freedom of his wife and daughters, reaches the US Supreme Court. In 1857, “[s]ix of the nine justices [agree] that the Scotts [have] no standing to sue for their freedom” (377), reflecting the Court’s growing willingness to “accept claims […] that slaveholders’ property rights [mean] that neither the federal nor the state governments [can] limit enslavers’ mobility […] [or] refuse to help enforce enslavers’ power over forced migrants or fugitives” (377). This decision almost becomes “the last brick on a constitutional and political-economic edifice that [ends] the debate about the expansion of slavery” (380). However, southern enslavers overstretch themselves by writing for Kansas “the most proslavery state constitution in US history,” fraudulently supported by proslavery Missourians “pour[ing] across the border to vote illegally” (380). The “Lecompton fraud” and overuse of political leverage gave Republican Abraham Lincoln an opening to argue that the Democrat’s policies will “inevitably [lead] to the subordination of all political economic freedom to the needs of enslavers” (381).

As political debates rage, violence breaks out between citizens of the free states and slave states and a raid by abolitionists intending to “seize the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia” (384) is ended by “an army colonel named Robert E. Lee storm[ing] [their] stronghold” (385). With “[s]lavery’s productivity […] higher than ever,” the “long tide of slavery’s expansion across the continent and hegemony over national politics seem[s] poised at a crest” and it is, at that moment, unclear whether it will “[c]rash, or roll on forward” (386). After Lincoln wins the presidential election in 1860, conventions in South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas vote for secession. Although “Confederate apologists” have long “put out the lie that the southern states seceded and southerners fought to defend an abstract constitutional principle of ‘states’ rights,’” this is only an attempt to “sanitize the past” (390). In reality, “[e]very convention’s participants [make] it explicit: they are seceding because they [think] secession [will] protect the future of slavery” (390). With this, the battle lines are drawn and, on April 12, 1861, “the first cannon boom[s]” (395) and the American Civil War begins. 

In the first two years of the war, the South stops planting and selling cotton, hoping that creating a “cotton famine” (398) will give them political leverage in Europe, bringing them valuable support. However, this raises prices, which “ironically render[s] cotton from other production zones price-competitive with the yield of enslaved hands for the first time in the nineteenth century” (398), and does not win the South any allies.

By the end of 1861, the South has “lost control of its oldest cotton region, South Carolina’s Sea Islands” (399). African Americans who had been slaves on the plantations, and who make up 90 percent of the population, want to divide the land into individual farms. After Britain’s “empire-wide emancipation” (399) in 1834, ex-slaves in Jamaica “refused to participate in sugar-plantation labor, wrecking Jamaica’s commodity export economy” (399). Fearing the same fate for the cotton economy in the South, the Union does not hand the land over to those who had been enslaved there for generations. Instead, it “claim[s] authority over the abandoned lands and rent[s] them to northern entrepreneurs who [propose] to reorganize and revive cotton production on the Sea Islands” (399). Central to their plans is a belief that they can use their “New England skill and energy” to “direct these persons [to] grow cotton 25% cheaper when employed by fair wages than when compelled to do it as slaves” (399). This proves not to be the case, and in 1862, “half of the cotton [is] rotting in the fields—cotton that could have been picked only at whip-driven speed” (399). They attempt to speed up picking by “paying pickers by the pound, withholding monthly wages until the end of the harvest, or haranguing the workers,” and even ask the government for “permission to use ‘the ball and chain’ to enforce ‘authority’” (399), but cotton production reaches nowhere near the levels it had reached under slavery.

With the war progressing well for the Union, Lincoln feels that he can “act more decisively against slavery” and releases the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation that declares that “as of January 1, 1863, any slaves in rebel-held areas [will] be free” (400). Enslavers try to move slaves further south, to avoid the advancing army, but a great many are still freed by Union forces. Many of these “free” African Americans are assigned to “different Union-controlled plantations to do forced labor,” where they have to display “‘a disposition for work’ that entitle[s] them to receive government rations” (401). Once the government allows the Union Army to begin enlisting African Americans in 1863, many join up, instead of working on the plantations. Others, still enslaved in the South, are “drawn by word of mouth passed from one side of the battle lines to the other” and flee their enslavers and “[enlist] immediately in the Union Army” (402). From this point until the end of the war, “almost 200,000 African-American soldiers—many of them former slaves—” (402) fight with the Union. This proves decisive, “provid[ing] a crucial increment for a North that [is] running out of soldiers” (405) and bringing a commitment and faith that that “help[s] the war-weary Union to persist in its effort through 1864 and 1865” (404). The presence of free African Americans “bearing arms and wearing blue uniforms” also encourages southern slaves “to refuse to work for their owners, or to run to the woods” (405) and “slavery beg[ins] to crumble more quickly” (403).

In March 1865, Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment which “end[s] slavery throughout the United States forever” (405). Shortly after, on April 9, 1865, “Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia surrender[s] at Appomattox in Southside Virginia” (406) and, “[a]fter four years, the war [is] over” (406). Less than a week later, on April 14, John Wilkes Booth, enraged by the president’s “support for extending the vote to African-Americans” (407), murders Lincoln. This makes Lincoln “either the last casualty of the Civil War or one of the first of a long civil rights movement that is not yet over” (407), for, in 1865, African Americans’ struggle for true freedom is in some respects only just beginning. Lincoln’s successor, previous vice president Andrew Johnson is “an alcoholic racist bent on undermining emancipation” who “signal[s] to southern whites that they [can] build a new white supremacy that look[s] much like the one African Americans had fought to end” (407). Through legislation, policies, and proposals, the South does exactly that, striving to “keep the status of African Americans as close to slavery as possible” (407). African Americans do not get farms of their own but instead receive the “compromise” of “sharecropping,” in which “African American households [work] individual plots of land as tenants, in exchange for paying the landlord a share of the cotton crop they [grow]” (408). Reliant on credit from store owners, many African-American sharecroppers find themselves trapped “in permanent debt” (408).

When the Fourteenth Amendment is passed, “making former slaves equal citizens of a multiracial republic,” “[w]hite resistance [is] brutal and widespread” (408). Some white reactionaries ride out “hooded in white, burning, raping, beating, and killing,” while others “[ride] to Washington and [make] deals” (409). When, in 1876, “northern Republicans [make] a corrupt bargain” that allows white southern Democrats “home rule,” they quickly begin “chang[ing] the laws to roll back as much of the Reconstruction as they [can]” (408). By the turn of the 20th century, they have managed to “[take] away the vote from most black men” (as well as some white men) and introduce segregation, “an array of petty and brutal laws” that will come to be known as “Jim Crow” (409).

As the South struggles to industrialize and revitalize its economy, southern whites build “monuments to the defeated generals of their war for slavery, [memorialize] the old days of the plantation, and [write] histories that [insist] that the purpose of the war had been to defend their political rights against an oppressive state” (409). Although this has been so successful that it has convinced “a majority of white Americans” that “slavery had been benign and that ‘states’ rights’ had been the cause of the Civil War” (409), in truth, the South went to war to maintain slavery and the benefits it derived from slave labor. Some argue that “the Civil War was ‘unnecessary’ because slavery was already destined to end” but this “dogma” masks the fact that slavery was growing ever more adaptable and efficient. With “[s]uccessful revolt from within” impossible, “war was the only way slavery would end in the United States” (414).

Ultimately, it was “survivors [who] ended slavery” but “[w]hen these survivors began to die off, they could pass on to their descendants very little in the way of material wealth” as “[s]o much had been stolen from them” (417). However, they had “a story that made them a people” and “a unity that was ultimately political” that “led them to choose solidarity over individual deals” (417). African Americans have transformed popular culture in America and across the planet and “changed the South and the United States and the world forever through the civil rights movement” (417). A key reason why “the descendants of enslaved African Americans” have been able to do this is that “those who survived slavery […] passed down what they […] learned. The gifts, the creations, the breath of spirit, songs that saved lives, lesson learned for dimes, the ordinary virtues, and the determination to survive the wolf” (419).