Recognising the role of slavery in the United States’ development up to 1865 bolsters the case for making reparations
In a new working paper I outline how slavery contributed to the development of the United States before the Civil War. The paper is called ‘King Cotton, the Munificent’ because I argue that slavery benefitted the free society of the North. In a nutshell, I argue that slaves were required to produce the cotton exports that balanced the imports that the Federal Government taxed. Those customs revenues then financed westward expansion, which tended to benefit Northerners because they had prohibited slavery in the Midwest. As the free states grew faster than the slave states, Southern slaveholders recognised that their cotton exports were being used to finance their own disempowerment in Congress, so they seceded. The North would not let them go, however, because they threatened to take with them the customs revenues that the Federal Government had relied upon up to then. The result was the Civil War, which eventually led to emancipation. Such is my analysis in an abbreviated form.