AdamKadmon: Direct slavery is just as much the pivot of bourgeois industry as machinery, credits, etc. Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have, no modern industry. It is slavery that gave the colonies their value; it is the colonies that created world trade, and it is world trade that is the precondition of large-scale industry. Thus slavery is an economic category of the greatest importance. Without slavery North America, the most progressive of countries, would be transformed into a patriarchal country. Wipe North America off the map of the world, and you will have anarchy the complete decay of modern commerce and civilization. Cause slavery to disappear and you will have wiped America off the map of nations. Thus slavery, because it is an economic category, has always existed among the institutions of the peoples. Modern nations have been able only to disguise slavery in their own countries, but they have imposed it without disguise upon the New World.
De Touqueville wrote about the economic differences between the Southern (Slavery) States and the Northern (Free) States when he visited America in 1832-1833. He commented that the Northern Free States were much more economically vital than the Southern States. He surmised that in a Slave system there is no reason to invent more productive methods because the cost of labor is so low. So actually Slavery is an economic detriment. The American Civil War was fought over the economics of slavery and not the morality of slavery. The Northern Industrialists could not compete with the Southern Slave holders.
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