Abstract
From its inception as an independent country, the United States hosted two social systems, one that officially recognized slavery and one that did not. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention were unable to agree on the elimination of slavery, ultimately allowing it to persist by state discretion and thereby allowing its extension throughout the nation. Seventy years later, at the time of the Civil War, slavery was exclusive to the south. Two distinct social, political, and economic systems characterized a divided house: a more urbanized and rapidly industrializing north, based largely upon free labor, and a mostly rural, agricultural south, based in considerable measure on slavery.
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Notes
- 1.
This section draws heavily on Gavin Wright’s excellent economic history of the South, Old South, New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy since the Civil War (New York: Basic Books, 1986).
- 2.
Engerman and Sokoloff, Factor Endowments, Inequality, and Paths of Development Among New World Economies.
- 3.
Wright, Old South, New South, 17–18.
- 4.
Ibid., 28. Wright points out that 19th century manufacturing was highly resource intensive, meaning that many industries needed to be located close to key resources like coal and iron ore. He notes that slave-owners, because of their focus on “human capital” rather than land values, did not aggressively search for mineral wealth.
- 5.
Ibid., 9.
- 6.
Engerman and Sokoloff, Factor Endowments, Inequality, and Paths of Development Among New World Economies, 1.
- 7.
Engerman and Sokoloff, Factor Endowments, Inequality, and Paths of Development Among New World Economies, 6.
- 8.
The southern economy was far from uniform, with the richest factor endowments concentrated in areas such as the Mississippi delta, and it was in such areas with rich soils that slavery was most preponderant. In 1860 slaves varied from about 49% of the population in the first five states to secede to 29% in the last five and less than 14% in the four border-states that did not secede.
- 9.
Engerman and Sokoloff, Factor Endowments, Inequality, and Paths of Development Among New World Economies, 17.
- 10.
David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 31.
- 11.
Ibid., 45.
- 12.
Ibid.
- 13.
Ibid.
- 14.
Ibid., 107. The Fifteenth Amendment did not establish black voting rights in the north, or prohibit voter qualification tests in the south.
- 15.
The technical reason for Johnson’s impeachment was that he violated a law saying he had to consult the Congress before removing some cabinet officials. Johnson defied this by firing his Secretary of War on his own, leading to the impeachment, which was really motivated by disagreements over Reconstruction policy.
- 16.
Blight, Race and Reunion, 309.
- 17.
Ibid., 390.
- 18.
Charles Patterson, The Civil Rights Movement (New York: Facts on File, 1995), 2.
- 19.
Blight, Race and Reunion, 344.
- 20.
Patterson, The Civil Rights Movement, 7.
- 21.
Wright, Old South, New South, 84.
- 22.
Ibid., 99–107.
- 23.
Ibid., 74–78.
- 24.
William J. Collins, “When the Tide Turned: Immigration and the Delay of the Great Black Migration,” The Journal of Economic History 57, no. 3 (September 1997): 607.
- 25.
Ibid., 610.
- 26.
Ibid., 611. See Robert Margo, Race and Schooling in the South, 1880–1950: An Economic History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
- 27.
Collins, “When the Tide Turned,” 617.
- 28.
Ibid., 629.
- 29.
Wright, Old South, New South, 123.
- 30.
Wright, Old South, New South.
- 31.
Ibid., 172.
- 32.
Wright presents data showing the emergence of a racial wage differential in Virginia in the 1920s. Ibid., 196.
- 33.
Sukkoo Kim, “Economic Integration and Convergence: U.S. Regions, 1840–1987,” The Journal of Economic History 58, no. 3 (September 1998): 672.
- 34.
Robert J. Barro and Xavier Sala-i-Martin, “Convergence Across States and Regions,” in Brookings Papers on Economic Activity: Macroeconomics, ed. William C. Brainard and George L. Perry (Brookings Institution Press, 1991), 115.
- 35.
Ibid., 125.
- 36.
Ibid., 132.
- 37.
Ibid., 133.
- 38.
Wright discusses the impact of the AAA on sharecropping in Old South, New South, 227–233.
- 39.
Wright, Old South, New South, 207–225.
- 40.
Ibid., 256.
- 41.
See Ibid., 244, table 8.1.
- 42.
Ibid., 261.
- 43.
Ibid., 262–263.
- 44.
The KKK was first founded in 1866 to restore white supremacy and act as a vehicle for underground resistance to Radical Reconstruction. In 1870 and 1871 Congress passed bills that allowed authorities to use force in suppressing disturbances and to impose heavy penalties upon terrorist organizations. In 1882 the Supreme Court declared some of the acts passed by Congress as unconstitutional, but by that time the Klan had practically disappeared. It was reincarnated in 1915 by groups who felt threatened by increased immigration and the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Membership dropped drastically during the Great Depression and the organization was disbanded in 1944. It had a resurgence in the 1960s during the civil rights movement, again to promote white supremacy. President Johnson publicly denounced the organization on national television and the KKK was ultimately unable to stem the tide of racial tolerance. It was never a criminal organization such as the mafia.
- 45.
Brown v. Board of Education (347 U.S. 483, 1954).
- 46.
Patterson, The Civil Rights Movement, 29–30.
- 47.
Quoted in James C. Duram, A Moderate Among Extremists: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the School Desegregation Crisis (Chicago: Nelson-Hall Publishers), 61.
- 48.
Peter B. Levy, The Civil Rights Movement (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998), 11–13.
- 49.
Lyndon B. Johnson, “To Fulfill These Rights,” speech delivered at Howard University, Washington, DC, June 4, 1965. Reprinted in The Crisis 72, no. 6 (June/July 1965): 348–353.
- 50.
Adam Cohen, “Editorial Observer: What Alabama’s Low-Tax Mania Can Teach the Rest of the Country,” The New York Times, October 20, 2003. Copyright © The New York Times Co. Reprinted by permission.
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© 2012 Bruce R. Scott
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Scott, B.R. (2012). The United States as “One Country, Two Systems”. In: Capitalism. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1879-5_9
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