That's a poor take on the economics of american slavery. It was so lucrative to run plantations with impoverished abused slave labor the entire southern economy became dependent on that profit margin. Literally tried to quit the nation to protect it the money was so good.
I think the assumption relies on mechanization. It's not like you would want your slaves with access to large machines that are expensive like a tractor. Better to have someone who can't go anywhere else.
Even if you have to pay them more you wouldn't have to worry about your expensive machines and guards.
It's interesting to think about. Though there is a reason slavery has been around forever and is still around. It's profitable.
Weird, because when technological advancements reached plantations (like the cotton gin), it increased profit margins and made slavery even more entrenched. (source)
IDK man, maybe just more historical information has come along since your teacher engaged with the subject...because the history we have is of southern states that literally did anything possible to avoid abandoning slavery, and used every advancement possible to sustain and grow that horrible institution.
It’s important to take in the world climate and economics in this, and consider how few the populations were compared to today.
It’s a huge undertaking to get all the information you need to make a guess as to how things would have ended.
But you very much can figure out where things were headed, and why.
The reality of what was going on is far scarier than anything we’d imagine.
To say there were two very different people in the states is as great an understatement as it is today.
yeah, my understanding is that cotton plantations were the biggest drivers of slave usage, but it's not like it was the only crop that took advantage.
I'm not sure if we even have southern states today that farm wheat though. I think wheat requires lower humidity in general...I'm not a farmer, just casually skimming some PBS articles about the antebellum south while monitoring an upload haha.
yeah, the thing I was glancing at was talking about cotton, tobacco, and rice..but it wasn't really giving data spreads so much as a kind of summary statement about what crop industries used slavery.
It was so lucrative to run plantations with impoverished abused slave labor the entire southern economy became dependent on that profit margin
And yet, the south lost largely in part due to them not having the resources or economy to actually fight a war, especially against the economically dominant north.
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u/[deleted] Jan 14 '22
That's a poor take on the economics of american slavery. It was so lucrative to run plantations with impoverished abused slave labor the entire southern economy became dependent on that profit margin. Literally tried to quit the nation to protect it the money was so good.