The Economic Reason for the Abolition of Slavery: Big Business

The Economic Reason for the Abolition of Slavery: Big Business

According to the text, “Industrialization radically altered traditional social structures.  It encouraged the disappearance of slavery in lands undergoing industrialization, partly because the economics of industrial society did not favor slave labor.  Slaves were generally poor, so they did not consume the products of industrial manufacturers in large quantities.  Industrialists preferred free wage laborers who spent their money on products that kept their factories busy.¹” (p. 665) Therefore, one has to ask what was the motivation for the abolition of slavery? In order to answer that question you must delve into the economics of slavery.

The English East India Company was an English and Dutch joint-stock merchant venture that “funded ships and crews²” in 1602 to trade globally. (p.478) This business venture was pivotal in the economics of slavery as these merchants eventually found themselves on the shores of the western hemisphere and thus establishing business partnerships with American merchants in the Northern and Southern parts of the United States.  These merchant partnerships were established as trading posts and though British and French merchants were trading products such as firearms, spices, and furs, these commodities soon became human; thus, giving way to the Atlantic Slave Trade which continued over two hundred and fifty years after the forming of the English East India Company.

These trading posts were usually located within the Southern part of the United States which included Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia.  Because of the demand for slaves, capitalist business organizations had to be developed in order to transport the now human cargoes to Northern business owners.  While Southern states established plantations to house and work slaves, the Northern states built factories and utilized their newly acquired human cargo in domestic capacities.   

In the Southern states for instance, African slaves were used to cultivate a crop called cotton and were pivotal in the foundational organizational capacities of the cotton monopoly and textile industry during the 1850’s.  Slaves would plant and extract cotton from the shrub in 400-to-1400 pound bales³.  From there the plantation owners transported the cotton bales to the gins or factories owned by Northern corporations who would then use their free laborers to produce textiles such as shirts, robes, bath towels, jeans, fishing nets, tents, paper, and interestingly enough – gunpowder.  Thereafter, the cotton was transported by another Southern owned transportation conglomerate to the local Southern markets where yet another Southern businessman had arranged for the goods to travel by rail, owned by another Southern enterprise where it then was taken to the trading posts by Southern merchant companies where none other than the East English India Company would ship the cotton products back to Britain and abroad. 

As you can see, the infrastructure required for this cotton monopoly was extensive and massive.  Southern plantation owners had positioned themselves in the global market as ‘the world’s major source of cotton⁴’.  In addition, the regions farms, which were also being manned by slaves, produced the states food and other resources.  They had, in effect, become ‘self-sufficient’ which eventually provoked the Civil War.  Cotton was so prevalent to the Southern economy that in 1858 Senator James Henry Hammond of South Carolina made the statement to Senator William H. Seward of New York that: “should they [Northerners] make war upon us [Southerners], we could bring the whole world to our feet… England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her. No, you dare not make war on cotton! No power on earth dares make war upon it. Cotton is King!⁵"  

By the time the Civil War of 1861 came about, big businesses and entrepreneurism through industrialism by way of slavery had infiltrated and influenced the American way of life.  It is also worth noting, that the business of slavery was so entrenched in the fiber of the U.S., that New Orleans Chaplain, Benjamin Morgan Palmer, was quoted as saying slavery had “fashioned our modes of life, and determined all our habits of thought and feeling, and molded the very type of our civilization.⁶” He went on to say that slavery was their “religious duty to defend the cause of God and religion…to conserve and perpetuate the institution of domestic slavery.⁷”

With cotton being an intrinsic part of society, it was not in the best interest of the Southern plantation owners to emancipate their staff.  On the other hand, Northern corporations had begun to forecast the profitability of liberating a newly identified target demographic - slaves.  With forty-four percent (44%) of the Southern population slaves, Northern business analysts determined it was not economically feasible for either to keep their target demographic enslaved.  The argument behind their findings was that as slaves, they could not afford the products they manufactured, travel on the railroads they’d engineered, nor communicate on the telegraphs they had just invented. 

Though Northern stakeholders didn’t agree with slavery, they opted for ‘free laborers’.  Free labor, according to the authors of ‘American Entrepreneur’ meant ‘the ability to work for the employer of one’s own choosing at a wage mutually agreed upon.⁸’ Thus according to Northern business owners, slaves should have the ability to choose where they’d like to work as opposed to being sold at auctions and made to work for Southern plantation owners.  One proponent of free labor, George Fitzhugh, stated “Northern factory owners enslaved their workers with inadequate wages.⁹”  The textbook also supports this position as it cites the horrible working conditions of the factories along with the rigorous and inhumane treatment of its free laborers. 

While Northern industrialism helped push for the abolition of slavery, it soon became more advantageous for business owners to hire free wage laborers who could purchase their products as opposed to continuing the oppression of  slaves who could not impact their bottom line.  As mentioned before, the Northern states insistence on liberating their target demographic led to the Civil War of 1861 and thus the Southern states cotton dynasty soon became a free for all after the Northern victory. With all the hoopla and social justice of the Northern states supposed justification for the abolition of slavery, the newly emancipated target demographic were given voting rights but remained economically challenged.  The land grants and other financial support promised in legislation failed to manifest, which meant the now former slaves of the South had to return to work for their former owners as sharecroppers.  As sharecroppers they received menial wages but were however finally able to purchase the products they had been targeted for.

Though the reason for the abolition of slavery was economic, the industry that defined a people still remains both viable and lucrative today.  According to the National Cotton Council of America’s (NCC) Economic Annual Outlook⁹, as of October 2, 2011 indices, cotton goes for $1.15 a pound.  It is also worth mentioning as indicated by its World Balance Sheet, that as of October, 2011, 115.3 million bales of cotton will be produced.  This means that even today, cotton is a $106 billion dollar global industry. Interestingly enough, as of the date of this report, of the NCC Officers, Board, and Advisors; not one is an African-American.

WORKS CITED

^{1-2, 4} Bentley, Jerry and Ziegler, Herbert. Traditions & Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past. New York: McGraw-Hill (2011).

^{3, 5} Burton, Orville Vernon, and Patricia Dora Bonnin. "King Cotton In The Civil War." The American Civil War Home Page. Bonnin, 16 Feb. 2002. Web. 06 Nov. 2011. <http://www.civilwarhome.com/kingcotton.htm>.

^{6, 7} Sebesta, Edward H., and Evan Hague. The US Civil War as a Theological War: Confederate Christian Nationalism and the League of the South:. Thesis. Canada, 2002. Print.

^{8, 9} Schweikart, Larry, and Lynne Pierson. Doti. American Entrepreneur: the Fascinating Stories of the People Who Defined Business in the United States. New York: American Management Association, 2010. Print.

¹⁰  Annual Economic Outlook for Cotton." National Cotton Council of America. 4 Feb. 2011. Web. 06 Nov. 2011. <http://www.cotton.org/econ/reports/annual-outlook.cfm>.