Capitalism and Slavery and the Civil War

Abstract

They push in different directions, these two great debates. The first, on the relationship between capitalism and slavery, invites us to consider how closely the two systems were connected, to the point where more and more scholars argue that slavery itself was a form of capitalism. The second, on the origins of the American Civil War, highlights the fundamental difference and growing divergence between the free labor system of the North and the slave society of the South, to the point where some scholars see an irreconcilable conflict between the two. Can these competing tendencies be reconciled? Is it possible to define southern slavery as essentially “capitalist” without losing sight of the crucial distinctions between free and enslaved labor? A number of recent books suggest that scholars have begun to recognize the problem but have not quite figured out how to solve it.