The Political Economy of Slavery

The African-American slave trade was widely discussed in print by abolitionists (and supporters), but the arguments were often purely moral in nature. A few writers, however, attempted to bolster the moral argument against slavery and the slave trade with a pragmatic one, namely that slavery also weakened the American economy. These authors included the abolitionist Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, the Irish economist John Elliott Cairnes and the American economists Henry Carey and Thomas Ellison. This set collects their major works on the subject, the leading texts on the political economy of slavery during the 19th century debate before and during the American Civil War. The thrust of the arguments, that slavery was actually weakening the economy of the American South, is very interesting in the light of the South's industrial failure during the Civil War, and this should be of interest to historians.