Do you believe that the newly emancipated slaves retreated to their own self-subsistence farms directly after the civil war or what?
This isn't my field, but I have read a few papers about the question of how profitable slavery was. Most of the debate seems to be over how profitable it was to the plantation owners, and whether they personally would have made larger profits by investing their money elsewhere (e.g., by hiring wage laborers to work their plantations, or by investing in manufacturing).
The question of slavery's impact on the development of the economy as a whole is completely different from that. Given how backwards the South remained, while the half of the country that abolished slavery surged ahead economically, it's difficult to see how one could argue that slavery caused the US' economic development.
Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about this in Democracy in America. It's well worth reading, to see a contemporary Frenchman's impressions of the stark difference in economic development between the Southern slave and Northern free societies: https://www.tota.world/article/1860/
Correct, but I didn't claim either of these things. I asked if the immense wealth among white Americans didn't grow out of the subjugation of slaves. Imagine 100 people who are equally wealthy. Now, imagine you take 1/6 of the people, remove all of their wealth, and disperse it among the remaining 5/6. Perhaps you skim a few percent off the top due to inefficiencies of the scheme. Are you saying the 5/6 people here didn't benefit? Sure seems like they did!
> The claim isn't directed to one group's heritage and its contribution. On its face, it is directed at "nearly everything that has truly made American exceptional." It literally ties the entirety of the American story (or nearly all of it) to slavery.
You...you read the full quote, right?
> Almost none of those things grew out of slavery. Our "legal system" for example was imported wholesale from England--based on principles of the Magna Carta dating back to 1215. Any slave trade into England itself was banned in 1102. Are there imprints on our legal system from slavery? Sure. But its factually incorrect to say our legal system "grew out of slavery."
There are a number of uniquenesses to the American legal system that trace themselves to slavery and racism. And I'd argue that many of those things are the things that make the American legal system "exceptional" and unique.
> The founding principles weren't fulfilled in 1776, but the history of the country has been one of progress in that direction. That was conventional wisdom among Democratic political leadership when I was growing up (and I'm only 37) and almost certainly still is the conventional wisdom among most rank-and-file Democrats.
See, I read the opposite from this. "Consent of the governed" is incompatible with slavery. You say that this was simply the principles "not being fulfilled" at the time, but then how can you say that we were founded on a set of values that the constitution then proceeds to explicitly reject? The constitution provides for the 3/5ths compromise, but didn't encode a right to vote (for anyone, that was left up to the individual states) until reconstruction.
> but the history of the country has been one of progress in that direction
This is sort of a meaningless platitude. "Sure you still don't have the rights to life, liberty, and happiness yet, like most people do, but you're closer now than your ancestors were 150 years ago" isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of the US.
Slave ownership was strongly concentrated. A relatively small class of plantation owners got rich off slavery. They didn't redistribute the proceeds across the entire white population. Economically, the slave-owning South, as a whole, lagged far behind the North, and slavery is a likely cause for that economic backwardness.
> didn't encode a right to vote (for anyone, that was left up to the individual states) until reconstruction.
That has nothing to do with slavery. The Constitution was written at a time when democracy was viewed with suspicion, and moreover. Nevertheless, the United States was, at the time, rapidly becoming one of the most democratic polities in the world. One way to see this is to look at the state constitutions written in this era.
My comment here wasn't about slavery. It was about the claim that america was founded on the principle of government by the consent of the governed.
I think your response proves my point.
> One way to see this is to look at the state constitutions written in this era.
Well, minus the whole slavery thing enshrined in half of them (not to mention landownership requirements that lasted until the civil war in some places, and the net reduction in voting rights in the early 1800s).
Like even at its founding, the US was only marginally better than the UK in terms of enfranchisement. About 2% of Philidelphians were eligible voters. That's the capital of a free state with only a few slaves.
> . A relatively small class of plantation owners got rich off slavery. They didn't redistribute the proceeds across the entire white population. Economically, the slave-owning South, as a whole, lagged far behind the North, and slavery is a likely cause for that economic backwardness.
The south, for the 17th time were not the only people who benefitted. Northern businesses that depended on various plantation based exports also gained.
But even still, I agree that your average white farmer didn't gain a lot, that's true of capitalist economies, not slavery in particular. The gilded age didn't fix wealth inequality.
The bigger question is whether or not the relatively rich and influential southern plantation owners had an outsized impact on, say, the development of universities and such.
This was absolutely a central principle of the revolution. The objections to taxation by Parliament rested on the colonists' lack of representation in that body.
> Like even at its founding, the US was only marginally better than the UK in terms of enfranchisement. About 2% of Philidelphians were eligible voters.
Perhaps at the founding of the US that was true, but Pennsylvania passed a radically democratic state constitution in 1776 that was highly innovative and unusual in many ways (e.g., a council elected by the people every 7 years to review all laws passed since the last council, with the power to veto any law they considered unconstitutional). The new state constitution granted the right to vote to any man who paid taxes, which by 1787 was nearly 90% of the adult white male population.
> Northern businesses that depended on various plantation based exports also gained.
How did they gain from slavery? They could but cotton from anywhere, and if the South wasn't delivering, they could import it from other countries. The argument works much better in reverse: Southern plantation owners depended critically on the rapidly expanding British and American textile industries. The planters were delivering a relatively low-tech, raw product. The textile mills didn't particularly care how it was produced, and they had multiple sources they could buy it from.
> The gilded age didn't fix wealth inequality.
But it did deliver much more economic development than the old slaveocracy.
Right, but the replacement didn't functionally address the broad issue of consent of the governed. It replaced a government of wealthy white gentry with a wealthy white gentry in a different location. Your average American citizen didn't actually gain much, if anything, in terms of representation. Only the upper class did (which is, in many ways, the class we're arguing about).
> Perhaps at the founding of the US that was true, but Pennsylvania passed a radically democratic state constitution in 1776 that was highly innovative and unusual in many ways
And it was practically unique in that regard. The NJ constitution had a wealth requirement and, despite originally granting women and free black people the right to vote, it later rescinded those rights!
Not to mention a Constitution like South Carolinas, which required slave ownership to hold public office.
But more importantly, while the US was busy regressing from the founding principles it only halfheartedly upheld, other nations were busy drafting and creating new constitutions that better uphold those ideals. And tot he point I keep returning to: our deification of the original constitution prevents many necessary improvements in that regard.
> But it did deliver much more economic development than the old slaveocracy.
I don't think I've said otherwise. You seem to think the argument I'm making somehow relies on slavery being a lynchpin of the American economy. It doesn't. It only requires that it have been present.
You're completely wrong about this. You just have to look at the constitutional changes in the states and the huge growth in participation in politics in the 1780s. The revolution was a mass movement, and it had a profound effect on how the general population viewed politics and on what sort of government they were willing to accept.
> And it was practically unique in that regard. The NJ constitution had a wealth requirement and, despite originally granting women and free black people the right to vote, it later rescinded those rights!
Pennsylvania wrote the most democratic state constitution, but it was not at all unique in overhauling its system of government to become much more participatory. New Jersey's 1776 state constitution lowered property requirements, replaced the royal governor with a governor selected by the elected legislature, and reduced his powers (e.g., no veto power), and as you point out, removed racial and gender restrictions to voting.
> But more importantly, while the US was busy regressing from the founding principles it only halfheartedly upheld, other nations were busy drafting and creating new constitutions that better uphold those ideals.
The US was one of the only democratic republics in the world well into the 19th century. That's the context for Lincoln's statement that the United States was "the last best hope of earth." The 1848 revolutions in Continental Europe had been crushed, and the US appeared to many to be the only major democratic country left standing.
> It only requires that it have been present.
If that's the extent of your argument, then your argument is fairly meaningless. Everyone knows that slavery existed in the South. What I and others object to is the claim that the US became wealthy because of slavery. It seems much more likely to me that the US was economically held back by slavery.
Its entirely consistent with what "modern Republican leadership" believes. From Trump's executive order inaugurating the 1776 project: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-or...
> The American founding envisioned a political order in harmony with the design of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” seeing the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as embodied in and sanctioned by natural law and its traditions. The formation of a republic around these principles marked a clear departure from previous forms of government, securing rights through a form of government that derives its legitimate power from the consent of the governed. Throughout its national life, our Republic’s exploration of the full meaning of these principles has led it through the ratification of a Constitution, civil war, the abolition of slavery, Reconstruction, and a series of domestic crises and world conflicts. Those events establish a clear historical record of an exceptional Nation dedicated to the ideas and ideals of its founding.
The founding principles weren't fulfilled in 1776, but the history of the country has been one of progress in that direction. That was conventional wisdom among Democratic political leadership when I was growing up (and I'm only 37) and almost certainly still is the conventional wisdom among most rank-and-file Democrats.
> It's also a response to work by a variety of groups to erase the impact and negative stigma around Slavery. To re-romanticize it as heritage and something to be proud of.
The claim isn't directed to one group's heritage and its contribution. On its face, it is directed at "nearly everything that has truly made American exceptional." It literally ties the entirety of the American story (or nearly all of it) to slavery.
> I'm also not sure that you're correctly quoting the article (or perhaps it changed, but it currently reads)
I copied directly from the post I linked. Its an August 13, 2019 article promoting a kick-off event for the 1619 project.
> I'd be curious to know which of those things you believe didn't grow, in some part or another, out of slavery. And whether the moon landing, silicon valley, or our many nobel laureates weren't in turn influenced/attracted/created by our economic might and industrial power.
Almost none of those things grew out of slavery. Our "legal system" for example was imported wholesale from England--based on principles of the Magna Carta dating back to 1215. Any slave trade into England itself was banned in 1102. Are there imprints on our legal system from slavery? Sure. But its factually incorrect to say our legal system "grew out of slavery."
The notion that our "economic might and industrial power" grew out of slavery is the central economic misconception in the 1619 Project, and I think it's responsible for a lot of the bombastic rhetoric. America is not rich today because of slavery. Jacobin corrected that assertion: https://jacobinmag.com/2019/08/how-slavery-shaped-american-c... ("Desmond begins his article by drawing on the Harvard historian Sven Beckert who argues that 'it was on the back of cotton, and thus on the backs of slaves, that the U.S. economy ascended in the world.' Yet Desmond neglects to mention that this claim has been widely rejected by specialists in the economic history of slavery."). As Jacobin points out, cotton production, the industry where most enslaved people were employed, accounted for 5-10% of the economy.
This is not some right-wing view. Jacobin Magazine is actual socialists/communists. Slavery can make plantation owners rich at the expense of enslaved people. But it can't make an entire country richer than it would have been without the labor of enslaved people. That's contrary to basic economic theory, as well as the economic data we have from the time: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2014/09/ending_slavery.html... http://bradleyahansen.blogspot.com/2018/06/was-slavery-centr....
> But are you really going to claim that the immense wealth among white Americans didn't grow out of the subjugation of slaves
Absolutely. You can't make a country richer by enslaving part of the population, and you don't need slavery to make a country rich. This is obviously true: in the 20th century countries like Japan, Singapore, and South Korea experienced industrialization and economic development just as rapid as what the United States experienced in the 19th century, without slavery. The United States economy, in fact, continued to grew just as fast after the civil war as before it: https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7LfU4Qu52oo/UUolq1OZROI/AAAAAAAAD.... If slavery had been critical to the U.S. economy, you would've expected a massive economic collapse right after the civil war. But there wasn't even a blip.