Replies

Look at the rate of manumission in Maryland as markets changed from tobacco farming to growing produce for the growing cities of Washington DC and Baltimore. The practice of using immigrants to load hogsheads on the ship rather than place slaves in the hold. With increased immigration, the economics of slavery were starting to fall apart. Why risk that investment when an immigrant could do the job, and if they got killed, hire another? (Why do you think the Irish ended up in so many hazardous jobs: Teamster, longshoreman, powder monkey, miner, police, firefighter, to name a few.)

With industrialization, too, the number of slaves needed was dropping, and the South stood on the threshold of those developments when war broke out.

The war was not over slavery, but ultimately economics. Had slavery been the seminal issue, Lincoln would have declared all the slaves free at the onset, not waited until 1863.,p>And yes, with rare exception, I firmly believe the economics of hiring help which could be dismissed on a whim and letting them fend for their provender out of their wages would have been far more attractive than purchasing a slave and being vested in their welfare to the point that nothing short of providing food, clothing, housing, and rudimentary medical care risked the loss of that investment, for the lifetime of the slave.

You might be interested in reading "Time on the Cross". It is an exhaustive treatment of the state of slavery in Antebellum America. I had it as an Economics text in college but it is an easy read for non-Economists.

I got to meet the authors, Fogel & Engerman, in 1977. They were friends with one of my Economics professors, Robert Gallman. They used his statistical studies extensively.

"Ceterum censeo 0bama esse delendam."

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)