A recent virtual reading group explored the “what ifs” of the Reconstruction era. One of the avenues we considered was whether monetary compensation could have prevented the Civil War. After slavery was abolished in 1833, Britain compensated slave owners in 1837. In 1862, the United States paid loyal slave owners $300 for each freed slave as compensation for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. In both cases slavery was abolished without bloodshed.
That “what if?” still looks big. Our group discussed Claudia Goldin’s “Economics of Emancipation,” which estimated the cost of voluntary emancipation by giving enslaved people enough money to purchase their freedom. . (Of course, this would not have been able to compensate those to whom the greatest evils were committed: those who were enslaved.)
We also talked about Richard K. Vedder’s “Slave Exploitation (Expropriation) Rate.” This attempts to calculate how much more economic value enslaved people produced than was “compensated” by the cost of their care.
There is value in understanding that slavery is not only unjust, but also costly. Still, the issue of adequate compensation for slaveholders and just compensation for freedmen misses the point if they try to stand alone. We can be misguided by focusing on what we imagine we can measure and forgetting what we are actually trying to understand.
It is better to consider some of the questions that Liberty Fund is keen to ask and refer to the reliable information available. Apply some readings from this group with Liberty Fund’s favorite thinkers.
Putting on Hayek’s hat: we do not and cannot know the price either side would have accepted. Because the choice has never been imposed on them. No data exists to perform these calculations. The market was too corrupted by slavery.
What would Adam Smith say? Estimates of marginal product used to calculate exploitation are underestimated, resulting in shortchanging freemen to compensate for lost profits. Smith says that “generous compensation for labor” leads to more diligent workers and higher production. This goes beyond the simple motivation to work harder to earn a good wage. Without the benefits of free labor, enslaved people would have been discouraged or prohibited from increasing their human capital. They were not rewarded for moving on to work solving the problems they thought they could best solve. Even if we were convinced that the data were good, the actual marginal product and hours of enslaved workers could not provide a counterfactual for why they should be compensated.
Counterfactuals are difficult, even if we are talking about contemporary situations. When we talk about slave labor in 19th century America, they seem insurmountable.
If there is good reason to think that the available data are highly speculative, more general observations about freedom, responsibility, and power may be more useful.
Smith observed not only slavery but also the motivations for maintaining the kind of slave society sought by the Confederacy. He believed that economic incentives alone were “nothing so humiliating to a man as to make him so proud that he likes to rule, and that he has to look down on his inferiors in order to win them over.” Ta. (WN III.ii) There is good reason to think that such economic considerations were never reduced in the Southern states, or at least not soon. We read some of the evidence in our reading group.
We can learn more about the (incredibly low!) economic price the freedmen must have accepted after emancipation and Union victory by reading what they asked for (for example, the (such as that written by a freed slave on Edisto Island, Carolina, to Andrew Johnson). I’m sure they would have happily been compensated in full even if it were possible, but what mattered most was the freedom, not the money. They wanted liberation (they got it) and the means to secure it over the long term (they didn’t get it).
We should also think about power and freedom, not money, to understand that the exploitation of slaves is complete and does not change based on how much value is extracted from slaves and how comfortable they are kept. is.
From the most important passage in The Wealth of Nations: “Indeed, black people, who make up a large part of the population both in the southern colonies of the continent and in the West Indies, are in bondage, and there is no doubt that they are They are worse off than the poorest of the poor, but that does not mean that they eat worse or that they consume less of the goods that would be subject to modest duties than the lower classes of England. ” (WN V.iii)
When you think about how exploited slave labor was, the “wages” paid to slave labor do not matter. Because exploitation is not just economic. There is no sufficient material compensation to justify slavery or eliminate exploitation.
We can learn more about whether there was a price the Confederates would have accepted by reading what the Confederates thought their goals were after their defeat (Pollard, Lost The Black Laws of Mississippi and South Carolina). We could also look beyond what we have read to the Confederate Constitution. Not only the war, but also the violence of the Saviors and the century of racism and tyranny they brought and maintained at an economic cost.Was it money that Confederate Southerners wanted? It’s difficult to explain. If what they are concerned about is power and control, they have an easy explanation.
It’s tempting to believe that there might have been enough money to produce an economically just outcome, avoid the Civil War, and right relations with enslaved peoples. If there were, the enormity of the horrors of war and slavery would become scientific, rational, and understandable. But in the end, these estimates are more of a type of model tinkering than they are useful as a matter of understanding what practical opportunities Lincoln, the Union, or the American government missed during Reconstruction. It’s just an interesting exercise for people. .
—
This piece is adapted from my comments in the recent VRG “Reconstruction: What if Lincoln Lived?” If you’re interested in this type of discussion, check out the list of upcoming reading groups at Freedom’s Online Library.
