“Do you really think supporting someone full-time, including before and after they stop working, was cheaper than hiring labor? I seem to recall that de Tocqueville talked about this when he made a comparison of the opposite banks of the Ohio River.”
Actually I’ve read articles that support the argument that slave labor is not cheaper than non slave labor. Nothing conclusive. I like the idea and think it has merit. So let me stupulate that slave labor was more expensive than paid labor. Would your point then be that the slave owners were not only immoral but stupid businessmen as well? No wonder the northern farmers didn’t join with them.
Could be. I don't know. I do know that slavery was legal in the North for quite some time, and it died off probably because owning slaves was not economically efficient rather than because of any moral consideration. (Northerners did not, for the most part, free their slaves but sold them to Southerners.) Owning slaves may very well have been a luxury that wealthy Southerners could afford.
As for "immoral," who decides? Slavery is common in the Bible with rules about how slaves should be treated. Aristotle speaks of slavery's virtues. Some of what we think about slavery now has to do with its eventual association with the War Between the States. Slavery is hardly the worst of human conditions. Just consider my great-grandmother. She died at Auschwitz.
ML/NJ