Slavery in the United States “‘Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense comes!’ If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether’.” --Abraham Lincoln Most people have little idea how slavery in the United States actually worked. Though slavery existed in the British North American colonies for more than a century before the United States declared independence in 1776, and though slavery continued to exist in the United States during its first 89 years of national existence through the end of the Civil War in 1865, of what slavery consisted--how many slaves there were, where they lived, what their conditions and circumstances were, how they lived, and how the system of slavery functioned--is not well known. It is not, indeed, too much to say that popular impressions in many of these areas and--at least as leading scholars present them--significant empirical findings appear not infrequently to be almost opposed. I rely here largely on the landmark work of Robert Fogel, Nobel laureate in economics from the University of Chicago, primarily in his book with Stanley Engerman on the economics of slavery in the United States, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (1974), as modified by Fogel in Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (1989). Most economic historians agree with Fogel and Engerman’s essential conclusion: slavery in the United States was an economically profitable system in the short and even intermediate term. Slave holders had a pecuniary incentive to treat slaves well enough to obtain maximum income from them, and most slave holders treated their slaves to maximize their economic production. I here also consider Uncle Tom’s Cabin for its role in symbolizing and molding concepts of slavery in the United States, and trace development of political events concerning and discussion of slavery in the United States in the decades leading up to the Civil War. I Slavery was widely practiced for almost all of recorded history.

1. Slavery in the United States
“‘Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be
that offenses
come; but woe to that man by whom the offense comes!’ If we
shall suppose that
American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the
providence of God, must
needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed
time, He now
wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this
terrible war, as
the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we
discern therein any
departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a
Living God always
ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray--that
this mighty
scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it
continue, until all
the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years
of unrequited toil
shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the
lash, shall be paid by
another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years
ago, so still it
must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous
altogether’.”
--Abraham Lincoln

2. Most people have little idea how slavery in the United States
actually worked. Though
slavery existed in the British North American colonies for more
than a century before the United
States declared independence in 1776, and though slavery
continued to exist in the United States
during its first 89 years of national existence through the end of
the Civil War in 1865, of what
slavery consisted--how many slaves there were, where they
lived, what their conditions and
circumstances were, how they lived, and how the system of
slavery functioned--is not well
known.
It is not, indeed, too much to say that popular impressions in
many of these areas and--at
least as leading scholars present them--significant empirical
findings appear not infrequently to
be almost opposed. I rely here largely on the landmark work of
Robert Fogel, Nobel laureate in
economics from the University of Chicago, primarily in his
book with Stanley Engerman on the
economics of slavery in the United States, Time on the Cross:
The Economics of American Negro
Slavery (1974), as modified by Fogel in Without Consent or
Contract: The Rise and Fall of
American Slavery (1989).
Most economic historians agree with Fogel and Engerman’s
essential conclusion: slavery
in the United States was an economically profitable system in

3. the short and even intermediate
term. Slave holders had a pecuniary incentive to treat slaves
well enough to obtain maximum
income from them, and most slave holders treated their slaves to
maximize their economic
production. I here also consider Uncle Tom’s Cabin for its role
in symbolizing and molding
concepts of slavery in the United States, and trace development
of political events concerning
and discussion of slavery in the United States in the decades
leading up to the Civil War.
I
Slavery was widely practiced for almost all of recorded history
in almost all parts of the
world. In ancient Greece, slaves were denied rights that citizens
had. These denied rights
included, on the basis of manumission decrees that former
slaves received, “legal status as a
protected member of the community,” “immunity from arbitrary
arrest,” the “right to work at
whatever he desires to do,” and “the right to movement
according to his own choice.” 1 Slavery
was also widely practiced in ancient Rome. It has been
estimated that during the first two
centuries of the Roman Empire as many as three of every four
residents in the Italian peninsula
were slaves.

4. Slavery was much practiced outside of Europe. In ancient
China, many rich families had
slaves, and the royal court and aristocracy possessed abundant
slaves. Slavery was practiced in
the Arabian peninsula and in Africa for hundreds, even
thousands, of years. It is thought that
more black African slaves may have crossed the Sahara Desert,
Red Sea, and Indian Ocean
between the 7th and 20th centuries than crossed the Atlantic
Ocean to the Americas between the
16th and 19th centuries.
Slavery of black Americans in the Americas commenced soon
after the discovery and
initial colonization of the “New World” by Europeans in the
late 15th and 16th centuries.
Following historical patterns established mostly by Africans and
Arabs, almost all black African
slaves were captured or conquered by black Africans in battle.
They were then traded, often
through Muslim intermediaries, to in the case of the Americas
slave traders from European
nations, preeminently Portugal, England, France, and the
Netherlands. Black slaves went
primarily to the Portuguese, Spanish, French, and English
colonies in South and North America.
Almost 10 million slaves survived transit to the Americas in
the three centuries between
1550 and 1850, when the great bulk of slaves from Africa was
captured and transported against
their wills. Twelve million captured black Africans started the

5. journey, so the mortality rate in
transit approached one-fifth.
Only a small minority of black African slaves transported to
the Americas wound up in
the English colonies that became the United States--about 6
percent, or 600,000 slaves. By
country or area, the distribution of slaves to the New World was
approximately as follows:2
Figure 1. Slave Imports to the New World
Portuguese America, Brazil
38%
Spanish Americas, Caribbean
17%

6. French Caribbean
17%
English Caribbean
17%
2
1 In Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 1960), 20.
2 Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the
Cross: The Economics of American Negro
Slavery (New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1974), 14.

7. English continental colonies, U.S. 6%
Dutch, other 6%
About 94% of slaves imported to the Americas went elsewhere
than to the British continental
colonies in North America that became the United States and
subsequently to the United States.
Brazil was by far the largest single importer of slaves. The large
majority of slaves not
transported to Brazil became slaves in the Caribbean in one of
the colonies of a number of
European countries, primarily Spain, England, and France.
II
Slavery in the United States is usually dated to 1619, when 20
blacks were purchased
from a Dutch vessel by a member of the Jamestown colony,
which at this time was the only
English colony in what would become the United States. The
Plymouth colony of the Pilgrims
would not be founded until the next year. Thus, as Benjamin
Quarles wrote, except for Native
Americans, African Americans are America’s “oldest ethnic
minority.” With the exception of the
English settlers at Jamestown, African Americans’ “roots in the
original 13 colonies sink deeper
than those of any other group from across the Atlantic.” 3

8. Relatively few slaves were imported to the English colonies in
continental North America
in the 1600s. In 1700, there were about 27,000 African
Americans in the colonies that would
become the United States out of a total population of about
275,000. At this point in national
prehistory, African Americans thus constituted about 10 percent
of the population. About 15,000
had been born in Africa or the Caribbean; the remaining 12,000
or so were born in what would
become the United States. In most of the decades between 1620
and 1700, no more than about
100 African slaves were acquired each year in the United States,
until the 1680s and 1690s,
when, during the 1690s, the average number of slaves purchased
each year grew to about 600.4
The status of these early African Americans was somewhat
different that what later black
slaves would experience. Some, if not most, of the first few
thousand blacks transported during
the 1600s to what became the United States were treated more
as indentured servants than
subsequently became the case, and many eventually received
freedom. As much as one-quarter
of the black population in Virginia and Maryland in the 1660s
may have been free.5 However, by
the later decades of the 1600s, semi-indentured servant status
for blacks became no longer the
case. The system of permanent and intergenerational bondage
for black slaves came into

9. existence. Nonetheless, at the time of the first national census
in 1790, close to 8 percent of the
approximately 750,000 African Americans in the United States
were free, close to 60,000 people.
By way of contrast to the system of slavery that developed in
the British continental
colonies, there was a much higher mortality rate among slaves
in the Caribbean Islands and
3
3 Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Making of America (New
York, NY: Collier, 1964), 7.
4 Fogel and Engerman, Time on the Cross, 21-23, 25.
5 Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of
Slavery in North America (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 38, 52.
elsewhere in North and South America. As seen, of the 94
percent or so of slaves imported to the
New World during the 16th through 19th centuries other than to
what became the United States
in 1776, the overwhelming majority went to the Caribbean and
Brazil (relatively few went to the
mainland possessions of Spain in the Americas). Conditions in
almost all of the European
colonies in the Caribbean and Brazil were hellish. While there
was a substantial natural increase
of blacks in the British continental colonies in North America,

10. there was a substantial natural
decrease, through higher adult mortality rates, in New World
colonies elsewhere.
Sugar was, through the 18th century, the primary commodity
that slave plantations
produced in most of the New World. The mortality rate among
slaves in the Caribbean and
elsewhere, largely as a result of disease, was exceedingly high
(as was the case among European
settlers in these areas). As Fogel and Engerman remark: “In the
British and French West Indies,
in Dutch Guiana, and in Brazil, the death rate of slaves was so
high, and the birthrate so low, that
these territories could not sustain their population levels
without large and continuous
importations of Africans.” 6
Colonies elsewhere in the Americas actually experienced
declining population, without
the importation of new slaves. Though what became the United
States and then the United States
accounted for only about 6 percent of slave imports to the New
World, by 1825 slaves in the
Untied States accounted for about 36 percent of slaves in the
Americas.7 While this figure
includes a relatively small number of slaves and their
descendants who previously were in
Spanish Florida or French Louisiana, nevertheless, that the
black slave population increased
naturally more in the United States than elsewhere in the
western hemisphere is certain.

11. Indeed, the rate of natural increase among slaves in the United
States was higher than the
rate of natural increase in the population of any European
country, and nearly twice that of
England. The rate of natural increase among slaves in the
United States was perhaps the highest
of any slave society in history. As hard as it may be to believe,
the natural rate of increase among
African Americans in the United States during slavery may have
been among the highest for any
substantial group in the world for an extended period to that
point.8
III
As mentioned at the outset, Uncle Tom’s Cabin played and
continues to play a significant
role in shaping conceptions of slavery in the United States--it
certainly symbolizes many of these
conceptions. Southern slavery became a major issue in the
United States in the first half of the
4
6 Fogel and Engerman, Time on the Cross, 25.
7 Ibid., 28.
8 Michael Tadman, “The Demographic Cost of Sugar: Debates
on Slave Societies and Natural Increase in
the Americas,” American Historical Review (December 2000),

12. 1534-1535: “The North American slave
experience is perhaps even more remarkable when compared
with free white populations.... By the 1850s,
the rate of natural increase was higher even that that of the
white population of the United States. This
was a remarkable outcome because, as Thomas Malthus
suggested as early as 1798, white Americans
expanded with a rapidity ‘probabl[y] without parallel in
history’” (ibid.).
19th century. From the beginning, slavery was very
disproportionately practiced in southern
colonies. Of the approximately 750,000 African Americans who
lived in the United States at the
time of the first census in 1790, more than 90 percent lived in
the south. About 60 percent of the
relatively few African Americans living outside the south were
free in 1790; this figure was
fewer than 5 percent in the south. As a result of the much
greater number of African Americans
in the south, though, there was a greater absolute number of free
African Americans in the south
than the north.
Between 1777 and 1783, while the war for American
independence was being fought, the
New England states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and
Connecticut passed laws banning
slavery. To this list, of the original 13 colonies, were added the
middle Atlantic states of
Pennsylvania in 1780, New York in 1799, and New Jersey in
1804. Of the original 13 colonies, 6

13. were slave states and the 6 above, and New Hampshire, became
free. The 6 slave states of the
original 13 states were Maryland and Delaware (which did not
fight for the Confederacy) and
Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.
At the first census in 1790, the population of the United States
was approximately 3.9
million, of whom the 750,000 African Americans constituted
19.3 percent. Of this 19.3 percent,
1.5 percent of the whole population of the United States were
free African Americans and 17.8
percent of the whole population were African American slaves.
Of the total population in the
north in 1790, 3.4 percent were black. In the southern states,
35.2 percent of the population were
black.
When the Northwest Ordinance passed in 1787 under the
Articles of Confederation--
allowing for future states from Ohio to part of Minnesota--
slavery was banned in the Northwest
Territory on the basis of a proposal made by Thomas Jefferson.
The United States Constitution,
drafted in 1787, allowed the importation of slaves to be
restricted by Congress in 1808 and
provided that slaves (though not free African Americans, who
would be counted fully) would be
counted at three-fifths of their total number for purposes of
determining state representation in
the House of Representatives.

14. IV
Slavery was waning in the United States until Eli Whitney
invented the cotton gin (short
for en“gin”e) in 1793, which allowed for vastly increased
production of cotton. The perspective
of slavery in the United States through the Revolutionary War
was more that it was a necessary
evil (more in the north) and that it was an economic necessity
(more in the south) than became
the case. The perspective was not so much--as it became in the
first half of the 19th century--that
slavery was a moral evil (as it came to be viewed in the north),
or that it was a moral good (as it
came to be viewed in the south). To be sure, there were always
crosscurrents, and different views
5
were represented in different areas at different times.9 But
relative emphases changed over time.
There was not as sharp a distinction between north and south in
the 18th century as there became
in the first decades of the 19th century.
The cotton gin changed everything--an example of the
influence of technology on social
organization and structure. Suddenly, there was a highly
valuable agricultural product capable of
great and almost limitless expansion. Slavery was transformed

15. ideologically from a necessary
evil probably going out of existence eventually (most of the
American founders’ view) to the
cornerstone of a highly profitable industry localized in the
south and creating a new style of life,
the large plantation system. Previously, units of agricultural
production utilizing slaves were not
as large as they then became.
About 3,000 bales of cotton were produced in the United States
in 1790 (a bale weighs
about 500 pounds). By 1801, 100,000 bales of cotton were
produced. This figure reached almost
4 million just before the Civil War. In 1800, the United States
exported $5 million of cotton,
about 7 percent of national exports. In 1860, the United States
exported $191 million of cotton,
about 57 percent of national exports.10
The period of greatest absolute expansion of slavery in the
United States was from 1800
to 1860. In 1800, there were about 850,000 slaves in the south.
In 1860, there were more than 3.8
million. While the proportion of African Americans declined in
the north between 1800 and
1860, to 1.7 percent, the proportion increased slightly in the
south, to 36.8 percent.
With the acquisition of the Louisiana territory in 1803, the
question arose whether new

16. states in this territory would be slave or free. No longer was it
the case, as it had been in 1787
with the Northwest Ordinance, of banning slavery from future
states for moral and practical
reasons. The question increasingly became, what sort of future
should the United States have--
slave or free? The south increasingly said the former and the
north, the latter.
The first half of the 19th century was the era of “King Cotton,”
one of the most desirable
products in newly industrializing Europe and America. The
south’s climate was ideal for growing
cotton. But African Americans did not merely produce cotton on
southern plantations. They grew
many other crops, tended livestock, participated in all aspects of
agricultural production and
management, and often were artisans in towns and cities. Some
free African Americans even
owned slaves. The caricature of all African Americans, even in
the south, merely picking cotton
on plantations is false.
6
9 Much of the original support for banning slavery in northern
states in the 18th century came mostly not
from individuals morally opposed to slavery, but from those
opposed to more African Americans in their
states. As early as the 17th century, laws were passed in several
northern colonies regulating and
restricting the conduct of African Americans, slave and free.
Laws banning slavery in northern states
resulted in the movement of slave-holders and slaves to

17. southern states.
10 Bruce Catton, The American Heritage Short History of the
Civil War (New York, NY: Dell, 1960), 11.
V
The period in which the most slaves were imported to the
United States was the 25 years
from the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783 until Congress
banned the importation of slaves
from outside the United States pursuant to the Constitution in
1808. During this quarter of a
century, close to 10,000 slaves were imported from Africa each
year. Indeed, about as many
slaves were brought to the United States during these 25 years
as during the whole previous
period since 1619.11
While Fogel and Engerman do not provide data on the average
number of generations the
typical adult African American’s family had been in the United
States in 1865, a rough idea can
be inferred from their work. As late as 1750, about two in five
blacks in the British continental
colonies had been transported to them, and the total population
of African Americans in the
continental colonies was about 250,000 out of a total population
(black and white) of about 1.2
million. The period of greatest importation of slaves to the

18. colonies--before the Revolutionary
War period, when importation was disrupted--was the 1760s,
when about 60,000 slaves were
transported to what became the United States.
Given that the median age of an African American slave mother
when she first gave birth
was close to 21, this would indicate that the duration of a slave
generation was perhaps about 25
years (the average age of slave mothers at their first birth was
22.5).12 Based upon comparisons
among the number of African Americans brought to the
continental colonies, the percentage of
foreign-born Africans in the total African American population,
and the number of African
Americans in different years in the colonies and then the United
States, it can be estimated that
the average number of generations a typical adult African
American and his forebears had lived
in the United States in 1865 was his own and the four preceding
it, a total of five generation, 125
years back in time, to 1740.
As late as 1810, about 20 percent of African Americans had
been born outside of the
United States, a figure that had been constant for 30 years.
Since virtually all African American
children were born in the United States, and the median age was
young, this would indicate that
about two-thirds of the adult, chid-bearing population in this
period would have been born in the
United States, and about one-third outside of it (with fathers

19. more likely to be born outside the
United States than mothers). As late as 1810, about two-thirds
of African American children in
the United States would have had, on average, one parent who
was born outside of it. In 1750,
the typical African American child born in the British
continental colonies would have had one
parent and three grandparents not born there. Strong links to
Africa lasted throughout almost all
of the slave period in the United States.
Slavery was big business in the south. The economy was a
slave economy. Though
African Americans constituted merely 37 percent of the
population in the south in 1860, because
African American women worked and white women did not,
African Americans began working
7
11 Fogel and Engerman, Time on the Cross, 24-25.
12 Ibid., 137-138.
at a younger age than whites, and African Americans worked to
a later age than whites and did
not live as long after they stopped working, slaves comprised
about half, or slightly more, of
workers throughout the south. Free African Americans were
perhaps another 3 or 4 percent of the
workforce across the south, often in towns and cities.

20. Thus, all African Americans, free and slave, constituted
perhaps 55 to 60 percent of
workers in the south. In states with higher percentages of
African Americans, the workforce
participation proportion was even higher. Interestingly, states
with lower total percentages of
African Americans tended to have higher percentages of free
African Americans, and vice versa.
Much white labor was expended in areas of plantation
operation, and transportation of raw
products from plantations and of finished goods to them. The
south was more rural, agrarian, and
agricultural, and less urban and industrialized, than the north.
There were substantially fewer
miles of railroads in the south than in the north.
It was just a matter of time before the passions ignited over the
issue of slavery would
burst forth in civil war. Slavery became less feasible as more
African Americans and their
families had been in the United States for a longer period of
time. Moreover, slavery was
inconsistent with the principles and ideals of the American
founding documents. Everyone is
created equal. Government exists to serve the people. The force
of technology on the
development of society is well exemplified by the Civil War.
Had it not been for technological
innovation, slavery might have gradually dwindled and
disappeared in the United States, as was
generally foreseen at the founding.

21. VI
Uncle Tom’s Cabin played a major role in shaping northern
opinions of slavery in the
years leading up to the Civil War. Originally published in serial
form, the work was published as
a book in 1852 and was an immediate sensation. Hundreds of
thousands of copies were sold in
the north.
The story of Uncle Tom’s Cabin is now unfortunately often
misunderstood. To be called
an “Uncle Tom” is, for most African Americans, a slur. An
“Uncle Tom” is considered for
African Americans to be a lackey of whites, or even a traitor to
African Americans. But this
picture does not do justice to the character Uncle Tom at all.
Harriet Beecher Stowe was a Christian, and she wrote Uncle
Tom’s Cabin from the
perspective of its final scene. It is therefore worthwhile to turn
first to this final scene in order to
understand her purposes in writing the novel and the nobility of
Uncle Tom’s character.
Uncle Tom is as Christ-like a character as portrayed in fiction.
He is ultimately sold to as
evil a slaveowner as can be imagined, Simon Legree, in the

22. deep and invisible south. Any
degradation and punishment that can be inflicted on Uncle Tom
is inflicted, because of Legree’s
evilness. Legree wishes to see African American men and
women suffer just because of the color
of their skin. Legree will even suffer loss of profit in order to
see pain inflicted upon African
Americans. He hates Uncle Tom most of all because he will not
budge in his devotion to Jesus.
Legree decides that Uncle Tom must die:
8
When a heavy weight presses the soul to the lowest level at
which
endurance is possible, there is an instant and desperate effort of
every physical
and moral nerve to throw off the weight; and hence the heaviest
anguish often
precedes a return tide of joy and courage. So was it now with
Tom. The atheistic
taunts of his cruel master sunk his before dejected soul to the
lowest ebb; and,
though the hand of faith still held to the eternal rock, it was a
numb, despairing
grasp. Tom sat, like one stunned, at the fire. Suddenly
everything around him
seemed to fade, and a vision rose before him of one crowned
with thorns, buffeted
and bleeding. Tom gazed, in awe and wonder, at the majestic
patience of the
face; ... his soul woke, as, with floods of emotion, he stretched

23. out his hands and
fell upon his knees,--when, gradually, the vision changed: the
sharp thorns
became rays of glory; and, in splendor inconceivable, he saw
that same face
bending compassionately toward him ...
‘I hate him!’ said Legree, that night, as he sat up in his bed; ‘I
hate him!
And isn’t he MINE? Can’t I do what I like with him? ...’ And
Legree clenched his
fist, and shook it, as if he had something in his hands that he
could rend in
pieces....
‘Well, Tom!’ said Legree, walking up, and seizing him grimly
by the collar
of his coat, and speaking through his teeth, in a paroxysm of
determined rage, ‘do
you know I’ve made up my mind to KILL you?’
‘It’s very likely, Mas’r,’ said Tom, calmly ...
Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart.
What man
has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear. What brother-man
and brother-
Christian must suffer, cannot be told us, even in our secret

24. chamber, it so harrows
the soul! And yet, oh my country! These things are done under
the shadow of thy
laws!...
‘He’s most gone, Mas’r,’ said Sambo, touched, in spite of
himself, by the
patience of his victim.
‘Pay away ...! Give it to him!--give it to him!’ shouted Legree.
‘I’ll take
every drop of blood he has ...’
Tom opened his eyes ... ‘there ain’t no more ye can do! I
forgive ye, with
all my soul!’ and he fainted entirely away.13
Uncle Tom’s death is meant to parallel Christ’s crucifixion.
9
13 Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin or, Life Among
the Lowly (New York, NY: Penguin, 1986
[1852]), 554, 578, 582-584.
When Abraham Lincoln met Stowe during the Civil War, he

25. said that she was “the little
lady who made this big war.” 14 Ann Douglas writes of Stowe
and Uncle Tom’s Cabin: “No
woman before or since Stowe has so successfully written a
novel designed to stir up the nation in
the cause of the major issue of the day. In March 1850, when
John C. Calhoun expressed his
wishes as to what the new ‘compromise’ should ensure the
South, he demanded that the United
States ‘cease the agitation of the slave question.’ Daniel
Webster backed him, and so, less openly,
did Stowe’s own father. Stowe defied the male establishment,
picked up her pen, and helped to
make what had been the protest of only a small minority of
abolitionists the concern, even the
preoccupation, of hundreds of thousands of Americans.” 15
VII
Slavery in the United States was economically profitable.
During the King Cotton era in
the first half of the 19th century, slavery expanded as never
before. There was a great movement
of slaves with their owners to the new lands that were becoming
cultivated to the west of the
Atlantic seaboard.
Slave families were usually not separated. Perhaps 10 to 20
percent of slave families
were separated. Fogel and Engerman summarize evidence with
respect to family separation and
related issues: “The belief that slave-breeding, sexual

26. exploitation, and promiscuity destroyed the
black family is a myth. The family was the basic unit of social
organization under slavery. It was
to the economic interest of planters to encourage the stability of
slave families and most of them
did so. Most slave sales were either of whole families or of
individuals who were at an age when
it would have been normal for them to have left the family.”
Fogel and Engerman also write that
“available evidence indicates that about 84 percent of slaves
engaged in the westward movement
migrated with their owners.” 16
Fogel and Engerman analyze, among many other sources, slave
sale records from the
New Orleans slave market from 1804 to 1862--New Orleans was
much the largest interregional
slave trading market and accounted for about one-third of the
interstate slave trade. These
records indicate that about six-sevenths of sales of slaves older
than age 14 involved unmarried
individuals, and of the one-seventh of slaves sold who had been
married, some were sold as
couples or with family members and some were widowed or
separated. Fogel and Engerman also
10
14 Abraham Lincoln in ibid., p. 19.
15 Ann Douglas, ibid, p. 13.
16 Fogel and Engerman, Time on the Cross, 5, 48. Furthermore,
since about 84 percent of the interregional

27. slave movement occurred with owners, and since about six-
sevenths of interregional slave sales involved
unmarried individuals: “It is probable that about 2 percent of
the marriages of slaves involved in the
westward trek were destroyed by the process of migration. Nor
is it ... clear that the destabilizing effects
of the westward migration on marriages was significantly
greater among blacks than it was among
whites” (ibid., 49); cf. Robert W. Fogel, Ralph A. Galantine,
and Richard L. Manning (eds.), Without
Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery--
Evidence and Methods (New York, NY: W.
W. Norton, 1992), 195-196.
present data that the sale of children without their parents
(particularly without their mothers)
was unusual, and may be able mostly to be accounted for by the
sale of orphans.17
Slavery reached full force in the British continental colonies
and then in the United States
for about a century, from 1760 to 1860. In 1760, there were
close to 350,000 slaves in what
became the United States; by 1800, this figure reached 850,000;
in 1860, there were 3.8 million
slaves in the United States. By contrast, in 1720, there were not
yet 100,000 slaves in the
continental colonies. More than 90 percent of the slaves in what
became the United States and
then in the United States for the entire period between 1619 and
1865 lived during some of the
years between 1800 and 1865.

28. Slavery in the English continental colonies and the United
States did not remain exactly
the same during the 246 years it was practiced. Slavery
expanded to it greatest geographical
extent in the 1800s, when it extended from the original southern
states on the eastern seaboard to
Texas in the west, through Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama,
Florida, Mississippi, Missouri,
Arkansas, and Louisiana. The median size of a plantation (the
size of a plantation such that half
of slaves lived on plantations with fewer slaves and half lived
on plantations with more) was
fewer than 20 slaves in the colonial era for tobacco, and rose in
the first half of the 1800s on
cotton plantations to 35 slaves. Approximately 64 percent of
slaves in the United States in 1850
lived on cotton plantations.18
Slaves were maximally exploited laborers--workers who did not
require pay. Their
position without legal protection led to their exploitation, but
also to profits for their owners.
Slavery in the southern United States led to its economic and
political underdevelopment
compared to the north and its inevitable defeat in the Civil War.
11
17 Fogel and Engerman, Time on the Cross, 49-50.
18 Robert William Fogel, Without Consent or Contract: The

29. Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New
York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1989), 30-31.