At 12:37 PM 9/23/97 -0700, Maggie Coleman wrote: > While I applaud the sentiments of this piece, I really think >> slavery in the USA was abolished for much more pragmatic reasons. If one >> reads the political economists writing in the USA at the time (NOT the >> European economists writing about the USA), then the reasons for abolishing >> slavery have alot more to do with the war between two different economies. I reply (WS): I am not an expert on US history, so forgive me if I miss something, but in my history book slavery was essentially a non-issue (post war declarations notwithstanding). The issue was the states' rights (the South wanted them more than the North), and slavery was used as an excuse or rallying point to either expand or curtail them. Freeing the slaves was not even considered by Lincoln, until the North was loosing militarly due to the ineptitude of its generals, and on the top of it, faced social unrest created by the draft laws (unlike the South whose population, despite the devastated economy, generally supported the war effort). For Lincoln, abolishing slavery was essentially an expedient way of getting cheap cannon fodder, and at the end of the war Blacks' share of the North's army was something like 10 times (if I remember correctly) of their share of general population. Needless to say that the proclamation abolishing slavery was not very popular in the North (it was met with riots) because many Northerners felt that the purpose of the war was drastically altered to what they considered a non-issue. Methinks, there is no single cause, economic or otherwise, behind abolition or, for that matter, the Civil War. Slavery was basically an high moral ground seized to support one's position in Civil War -- but the real reasons most likely varied quite considerably among different social groups or even individuals. Besides, if the North 'freed' their labor form social obligations --i.e. lowered the cost of its reproduction, that gave it a competitive advantage over the South that had to maintain their labor force beyond their economic usefulness. Following this logic, if I were a Northern businessman, I'd do everything humanly possible to make the South keep that peculiar institution, rather than going to war to abolish it. regards, wojtek sokolowski institute for policy studies johns hopkins university baltimore, md 21218 [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (410) 516-4056 fax: (410) 516-8233 POLITICS IS THE SHADOW CAST ON SOCIETY BY BIG BUSINESS. AND AS LONG AS THIS IS SO, THE ATTENUATI0N OF THE SHADOW WILL NOT CHANGE THE SUBSTANCE. - John Dewey
