QUESTIONING SOME "MYTHS" ABOUT SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES

The National Observer, July 27, 1974

The following is an excerpted review of two books by Robert

William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The

Economics of American Negro Slavery and Time on the Cross: Evidence

and Methods - A Supplement.

by C. Van Woodward

The "Cliometricians," as they call themselves, have married the

muse of history to the science of mathematics. These statistical

historians are extremely sensitive and defensive about the union

for they are aware that traditional devotees of Clio, most

historians, regard the marriage as a mesalliance, a forced union of

incompatibles.

Cliometricians Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman (especially the

former) are by now scarred veterans of this guerrilla war in the

academy. In this all-out assault on American slavery historians,

they have adopted a strategy somewhat more propitiatory than is

customary...

The reader is titillated with the warning that "this will be a

disturbing book to read," that its "revolutionary" findings were

"initially discounted, even rejected out of hand" by the authors

themselves. They plead for "forbearance on the part of the reader"

and promise that "this forbearance will prove worthwhile..."

The object of the attack is the entire "traditional"

interpretation of the slave economy, and the authors define this in

"five main propositions" as follows:

"1. that slavery was generally an unprofitable investment, or

depended on trade in slaves to be profitable, except on new, highly

fertile land; 2. that slavery was economically moribund; 3. that

slave labor and agricultural production based on slave labor were

economically inefficient; 4. that slavery caused the economy of the

South to stagnate, or at least retarded its growth, during the

antebellum era; and 5. that slavery provided extremely harsh

material conditions of life for the typical slave."...

The last of the propositions, the one about extremely harsh

conditions of life, crackles with moral electricity and has had the

powerful support of recent neoabolitionist historians, some of whom

hold that American slavery in this respect was the worst of all the

systems of the New World. We shall turn to that proposition first.

New questions about the comparative plight of the South's slaves

were raised by Philip D. Curtin's study of the demography of the

slave trade, and Fogel and Engerman develop his findings to show

that the African slaves flourished biologically in the United

States as nowhere else.

While slaves in Latin America could not sustain their population

by natural increase and had high rates of annual decrease, the

South's slaves multiplied at unprecedented rates. Had the South

duplicated the demographic experience of the West Indies, it would

have had only 186,000 slaves by 1800 instead of over a million, and

in the next 60 years American slaves quadrupled in number. By the

crudest test, that of survival and reproduction, the American

slaves had no equal or rival anywhere. The authors are careful not

to attribute their experience to good treatment, but of course it

opens a question...

According to the computers of the Cliometricians, American

slaves were remarkably well fed. Their average daily diet was

"quite substantial," and its energy value "exceeded that of free

men in 1879 by more than 10 per cent." Far from adequate, "it

actually exceeded modern (1964) recommended daily levels of the

chief nutrients" - of protein by 110 per cent.

Data on slave housing is admittedly more sparse. To say that it

"compared well with the housing of free workers in the (late)

antebellum era" and that the "typical" cabin "probably contained

more sleeping space per person than was available to most of New

York City's workers half a century later" means little without the

variable of quality.

Evidence on health is more solid, though the contribution of

medicine, however lavishly used, is doubtful. Limited samples

indicate remarkably few days lost from illness of workers. Planter

concern for the welfare of pregnant slave women paid off with a

lower mortality rate in child-bearing than that of Southern white

women.

The infant death rate of slaves was "virtually the same" as that

of Southern whites. No doubt the ghosts of many hungry, cold, and

ailing slaves protest the contrary, but Cliometricians use

averages.

Life expectancy at birth for slaves was four years shorter than

for American whites as a whole, but it was the same as that for the

Dutch and the French, higher than for Italians and Austrians, and

"slaves had much longer life expectations than free urban

industrial workers in both the United States and Europe."

Whipping fell from favor as an acceptable punishment by the

Nineteenth Century in the free states, but "persisted in the South

because the cost of substituting hunger and incarceration for the

lash was greater for the slaveowner than for the Northern employer

of free labor."

The slender basis used for the quantification of whippings is

unimpressive, but the authors found brutal and sadistic masters

relatively rare. Whipping was an integral part of the system of

discipline and motivation, but the work attitude desired by the

master "could not be beaten into slaves. It had to be elicited."

For that, "they developed a wide-ranging system of rewards,"

rewards for short-run performance such as prizes in goods or cash

or unscheduled holidays, for the longer run, year-end bonuses, and

longer still, promotions in economic and social status - from field

hand to artisan, from that to driver and so on to overseer, the

right to hire out and the right to self-purchase - all with

tangible pay-off.

Slaves could double and triple their "basic income" of upkeep

and frequently did. The uniform level of income for slaves is

pronounced a myth, along with exclusive reliance on the lash for

incentive to work.

Another demonstrable myth was that all slaves were menial

laborers. The fact was that about 7 per cent of the men held

managerial posts, about 12 per cent were skilled craftsmen or

artisans, and another 7.4 per cent held domestic posts such as

coachmen or house servants. Slave society thus "produced a complex

social hierarchy which was closely related to the occupational

pyramid," with one out of every five adult slaves holding

"preferred occupational positions."

One of the most significant discoveries of Fogel and Engerman is

that among moderate-sized plantations (16 to 50 slaves) fewer than

one out of six employed a white overseer, and even on the larger

ones (more than 50 slaves) only one out of four. The consequence

was that much of the responsible plantation management and

agricultural supervision was in the hands of black slave overseers,

drivers, and gang foremen. Black overseers were regularly in

charge of the whole production side of plantation operation,

including entrepreneurial decisions, field operations, and supply

purchasing.

How can this picture of economic order and social stability

possibly be reconciled with the slave market and all its horrors -

broken marriages, divided families, child sales, systematic slave

breeding - "like oxen for the shambles" - the "stud farms,' the

"black harems" kept by dissolute masters and their mixed-blood

brood, the famous "submissiveness and promiscuity" of slave women?

The answer of this study is that clear economic advantage

combined with Victorian morality to promote a strong, stable,

nuclear slave family. It was not a "matriarchal" family with an

emasculated, transient father. "For better or worse, the dominant

role in slave society was played by men, not women." Planters

recognized husbands as head of the family and the family as an

institution of "central importance" on the plantation. It was the

housing unit, the administrative unit, an important instrument for

labor discipline, and the main instrument for procreation and

child-rearing. Elaborate systems of rewards, sanctions, codes, and

ceremony were employed to promote family stability, and the system

by and large was a success.

Infractions there were, as in all codes, and slavery encouraged

some of them. Many masters did take slave mistresses and

concubines, and promiscuity did occur in the quarters. These

investigators, however, find no evidence "which sustains the charge

that promiscuity among slaves was greater than that found among

whites."...

By far the most damaging moral indictment of slavery used by the

abolitionists was the charge of systematic breeding of slaves for

the market, the "stud" farms...

Fogel and Engerman dismiss the theory as a "myth." They point

out that not a single authentic case of a "stud" farm has been

turned up...

It remains to fit the slave trade into this revision. The great

movement of slave population was between the upper and seaboard

states and the Gulf states, the exporting and importing states, or

as the abolitionists had it, the "breeding states" and the "buying

states." Between 1790 and 1860 a total of 835,000 slaves made this

western move. The Cliometricians find that 84 per cent of the

slaves in the westward movement migrated with their owners and only

16 per cent were moved by slave traders for the market, or in the

old phrase "sold down the river."

What was the cost to slave-family integrity in broken marriages

and children torn from parents? Using the vast slave records of

New Orleans between 1804 and 1862 (never previously explored by

historians), Fogel and Engerman find that 84 per cent of all sales

of slaves over 14 involved unmarried persons. Allowing for the

percentage sold with their mates and those voluntarily separated or

widowed, they conclude that "it is probable that less than 2 per

cent of the marriages involved in the westward trek were destroyed

in the process of migration" - perhaps (they speculate here) not

"significantly greater among blacks than it was among whites"

caught up in the westward movement.

As for the legend that children under 13 were "hardly less than

a staple in the trade," it seems that only 9.3 percent of the New

Orleans sales were children of this age. Since 15.9 per cent of

slave children under 13 were orphans because of the high death rate

of that time, the full extent of the interregional slave trade in

children could be accounted by "just 1 out of every 810 orphans."

Of course the slaves "sold down the river" were only a small

part of the total domestic slave trade. Projecting figures on

slave trading in Maryland (local and interstate) between 1830 and

1840 to the national level, the authors calculate that total slave

sales in the country averaged about 50,000 a year over the period

1820 to 1860. This meant that "on the average only 1 slaveholder

out of 22 sold a slave in any given year, and that roughly one-third were estates of deceased persons"...

Turning from the effect of the slave economy on the slaves to

its effects on the slaveholders, the nonslaveholders, and the South

as a whole, the Cliometricians martial their statistical forces to

answer a host of old questions. Did planters, as many historians

have held, find slavery essentially unprofitable and maintain it

from irrational, aristocratic, non-economic motives? Was slavery

moribund on the eve of the Civil War doomed already to extinction,

and were planters pessimistic about their future? Were their

agriculture and labor force inefficient and unproductive compared

with free agriculture? Was slavery incompatible with industry and

urban life? Were nonslaveholders impoverished and despondent? Was

the South's economy stagnating and its growth arrested?

The response to each of these questions from Fogel and Engerman

is a ringing negative. The planters were doing very well indeed.

Enjoying average earnings of about 10 per cent on the market price

of their bondsmen, they received "rates of return equal to, or in

excess of, the averages which obtained in a variety of non-agricultural enterprises," New England textiles and Southern

railroads, for example...

Fogel and Engerman place heavy blame on the abolitionists,

especially Cassius Marcellus Clay and Hinton Rowan Helper (both

Southerners), and particularly Frederick Law Olmsted, for

misleading subsequent historians about the character and strength

of the slave economy and the culture and capability of the slaves.

Because they hated slavery so much, they sought to prove it not

only bad morally but disastrous economically, not only bad for

blacks but whites as well, nonslaveholders as well as

slaveholders...

They keystone of the economic indictment, however, was the

inefficiency of slave labor. And because of their unconscious

racism the abolitionists fixed upon the African slaves their

enduring stereotype of laziness, incompetence, stupidity, and

sloth, of being habitual shirkers, malingerers, pilferers, and

liars. Negro domestics, said Olmsted, could not do half the work

of "the commonest, stupidest Irish domestic drudges of the North."

Those modern historians and writers who shared a hatred of slavery,

and even some like Ulrich B. Phillips who did not, perpetuated the

abolitionist views of the slave economy and the slave.

With all these indictments of the economy and the slave our

Cliometricians take strong issue. By use of elaborate data,

techniques, and equations, they arrive at the conclusion that

"Southern agriculture as a whole was about 35 per cent more

efficient than Northern agriculture in 1860." That is, with a

given amount of labor, land, and capital, a Southern farm could

produce 35 per cent more than a Northern farm. Both Southern free

and slave farms were more efficient than Northern farms, but while

the South's free farms were only 9 per cent more efficient, slave

farms were 40 per cent more efficient. Efficiency was correlated

with scale, and all free farms were small while all large ones used

slave labor. There were variations in area and land, but slave

plantations in the newer Southern states outstripped Northern free

farm efficiency by 53 per cent...

These triumphs of agricultural efficiency are attributed to

planter ingenuity and the excellent quality of slave labor. No

cavalier fops or lazy triflers, the leading planters were alert to

every advantage, attune to scientific advance, and alive to every

detail and to nothing more than details of labor management.

Their main secret was superb labor management. Specialized and

interdependent, each with an assigned set of tasks throughout the

year, drivers, foremen, plowmen, hoe hands, and so on through

nurses and cooks "were as rigidly organized as in a factory." The

crucial element was the gang system - plow gangs, harrow gangs, hoe

gangs - which kept each other under pressure and maintained a

steady, intense rhythm of work.

The plantation regimen was "more like a modern assembly line

than...the routine in many of the factories of the antebellum era."

In fact, the authors claim that "the great plantations were the

first large, scientifically managed business enterprises" and the

black slaves were "the first group of workers to be trained in the

work rhythms which later became characteristic of industrial

society." Olmsted was the "pre-industrial man," not the big

planter.

It could not have been done without slave labor. Free labor

would not submit to the gang regimen, nor would blacks after

freedom. But it could not have been done either by the type of

stupid, malingering, slothful, incompetent slaves described by the

abolitionists and neoabolitionists...

The results measured in per capita income and rate of economic

growth for the South as a whole are striking refutation of the

abolitionists' economic indictment of slavery. The per capita

income of the Northeast was extraordinary and exceeded that of all

other regions, but that of the South was also very high and

exceeded the per capita income of the other free states, the

present Middle West, by 14 per cent. In fact, the South was richer

in 1860 than any country of Europe save England, and Italy did not

attain the Southern per capita income of 1860 until the eve of the

Second World War...

Granting the amount of wealth, what of inequalities of

distribution, for example the belief that 70 per cent of Southern

whites lived in poverty or on the border of hunger? While wealth

was more unequally distributed among farmers of the South than

those of the North, it was less unequal than wealth distribution in

urban areas. Since much the larger urban population was in the

North, the distribution of wealth, so we are told, "was roughly the

same above and below the Mason-Dixon line for free populations."

Yes, but that leaves the unfree to account for.

Here our Cliometricians enter a line of reasoning and a series

of sophisticated computations that baffle the reviewer's

comprehension and leave him more skeptical than does any other

finding (and the promptings of skepticism are not rare.) But to

report their conclusions, they find that on the average only "12

per cent of the value of income produced by slaves was expropriated

by their masters," and that this falls well within modern rates of

expropriation. They go further to say that in "the course of his

lifetime the typical slave field hand received about 90 per cent of

the income he produced."...

Barrington Moore, Jr., once remarked that the reason leftist

historians shun quantified history is that it usually proves that

things were not so bad before the revolution. So it has proved in

this case. Of course Messrs. Fogel and Engerman are perfectly

aware that they will be charged with concocting the best defense of

the Jolly Old Institution since the days of John C. Calhoun and

George Fitzhugh. In fact, many of their findings would serve as

documentation of the proslavery argument. They report preliminary

reactions: Are "we merely trying to shock fuzzy liberals?" And

again, "What are you guys trying to do? Sell Slavery?"

They deny this heatedly. But they admit they are distressed

over the apparent clash between their findings and their personal

values...

They protest their abhorrence of slavery and its moral

underpinnings, their awareness of its (unquantifiable)

psychological and cultural deprivations, their appreciation of the

contrast between concrete existential experience and abstract

statistical aggregates...

One of the authors' justifications for defying received opinion

deserves special consideration. This is their desire to set right

the slavery heritage with which historians have saddled modern

American blacks. The conventional picture is that their plight is

due not to "biological inferiority, but sociological circumstances.

Blacks were the pitiful victims of a system of slavery so

repressive that it undermined their sense of family, their desire

for achievement, their propensity for industry, their independence

of judgment, and their capacity for self-reliance."

This is the reason that our best young black historians have

begun to reject one feature of the traditional abolitionists

picture of the slave and to seek in the slave experience the

foundations of black cultural, psychological, family, and moral

resources. It is why they have rejected the "sambo" concept of the

slave personality. For if this simpering, cringing, emasculated,

childish creature were really the end product of the slave

experience, what foundations are there for racial pride and hope

for the future?

Had they thought of it, the authors might have pointed out also

that the traditional picture of the pitiful, emasculated slave is

the standard rationalization of policy makers for modern problems

of the black minority. It runs like a litany through "background"

papers on welfare, employment, the "matriarchal" family, the public

schools. It turns up in Supreme Court opinions and Presidential

addresses. It has become the conventional way of shifting

responsibility for the faults and failings of the free-enterprises

system to the shoulders of a forgotten and long-discredited class

of a remote period.

The Cliometricians have been forewarned by preliminary

skirmishes of the ordeal that faces them from their critics. They

report of confrontations with outraged colleagues, the "mutual

recriminations," "fiery stares," "thinly disguised insinuations of

racism," "caustic charges of naive romanticism," and a "torrent of

passionate speeches." This is to be expected. For they are not

only taking on embattled colleagues over professional issues but

also a deeply entrenched national credo.