There's a pretty decent op-ed about this in today's /NY Times/:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/king-cottons-long-shadow/?ref=opinion
Marsh
On 4/1/13 3:00 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Message: 9 Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2013 11:27:13 -0700 From: David Shemano
<[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Pen-l] Capitalism and slavery
To: Progressive Economics <[email protected]> Message-ID:
<[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Agreed, but does not that
contradict the assertion that NYC's (or more generally, the North's)
pre-Civil War prosperity was dependent on the Southern slave economy?
After the Civil War, the South was a (relative) economic backwater for
several generations, but the North did not miss a beat. So if the
North thrived without slavery (and without significant economic
contribution from the South) after the Civil War, why should we
conclude that the North's wealth was dependent on slavery (and the
Southern economy) before the Civil War? Or to put it more accurately,
why should we conclude that if the South did not have a slave economy
before the Civil War, the post-Civil War rapid economic expansion and
industrialization in the North would not have occurred? David Shemano
-----Original Message----- From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Louis Proyect
Sent: Monday, April 01, 2013 11:02 AM To: Progressive Economics
Subject: Re: [Pen-l] Capitalism and slavery On 4/1/13 1:47 PM, David
Shemano wrote:
>The quote within a quote within a quote ends: 'What would New York be
>without slavery?'"
>
>Well, slavery ended in 1865. According to Wikipedia, NYC's population
>went from 813k in 1860 to 1.2m in 1880 to 3.4m in 1900.
>Any dispute that NYC did pretty well in the Gilded Age? What am I to
>make of the fact that NYC really took and thrived after the end of
>slavery?
>
>David Shemano
I imagine that with the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and the descent of
African-Americans in the Deep South into a status that was free in name only,
the Great American profit-making machine benefited the privileged everywhere,
including NY.
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
