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The plantation owners in the South were more akin to medieval landowners than capitalists. An economy based on land ownership and inefficient agriculture doesn’

The plantation owners in the South were more akin to medieval landowners than capitalists. An economy based on land ownership and inefficient agriculture doesn’t have much in common with capitalism - where the interchange of money and its investment and use are the drivers of wealth creation. The industrialised and capitalistic North, which rejected slavery, prospered far more than, and ultimately defeated, the South.

gumby 7y ago
> The industrialised and capitalistic North, which rejected slavery How do you think Boston became so wealthy? Slave mortgages and financing slave trips to Africa. Whaling didn’t take off until the latter declined, but the slave mortgages continued through the war.
- watwut 7y ago
  Yes, slavery makes slave owner more rich. But overall yankees were the ones doing competitive capitalism. People having their own small businesses that competes and treating your own work as something you sell. South society was more about everyone having his place and being supposed to stay there. Social classes, entrenched large plantations that work slaves instead of hiring people. Slaves dont competed in market by selling their work and whites would sell slaves work out of pride. Large chunk of economy was in slave ownership, it made people rich. But, it was not as much capitalism the way north was as a result.
  - roboys 7y ago
    Slaves were (if im not mistaken) the first asset that was securitized in the new world. People across Europe who never touched a slave got rich from the trade. "First, American planters organized new banks, usually in new states like Mississippi and Louisiana. Drawing up lists of slaves for collateral, the planters then mortgaged them to the banks they had created, enabling themselves to buy additional slaves to expand cotton production. To provide capital for those loans, the banks sold bonds to investors from around the globe — London, New York, Amsterdam, Paris. The bond buyers, many of whom lived in countries where slavery was illegal, didn’t own individual slaves — just bonds backed by their value. Planters’ mortgage payments paid the interest and the principle on these bond payments. Enslaved human beings had been, in modern financial lingo, “securitized." "Here is how the American slave-breeding industry worked, according to the Sublettes: Some states (most importantly Virginia) produced slaves as their main domestic crop. The price of slaves was anchored by industry in other states that consumed slaves in the production of rice and sugar, and constant territorial expansion. As long as the slave power continued to grow, breeders could literally bank on future demand and increasing prices. That made slaves not just a commodity, but the closest thing to money that white breeders had. It’s hard to quantify just how valuable people were as commodities, but the Sublettes try to convey it: By a conservative estimate, in 1860 the total value of American slaves was $4 billion, far more than the gold and silver then circulating nationally ($228.3 million, “most of it in the North,” the authors add), total currency ($435.4 million), and even the value of the South’s total farmland ($1.92 billion). Slaves were, to slavers, worth more than everything else they could imagine combined." https://kottke.org/16/02/a-history-of-the-slave-breeding-industry-in-the-united-states https://kottke.org/16/02/a-history-of-the-slave-breeding-ind...
sgt101 7y ago
The Californian gold rush was a big factor; it created a huge stimulus and liquidity injection, recapitalising US industry, infrastructure and fedral government. Ironically this empowered the north to contend with the south, freeing (in name and partially) the slaves of the south but condeming the peoples of the west to genocide.
- roboys 7y ago
  Don't forget all the opium money that was being poured into the North, killing Chinese people with overdoses was very profitable.

gumby 7y ago

> The industrialised and capitalistic North, which rejected slavery How do you think Boston became so wealthy? Slave mortgages and financing slave trips to Africa. Whaling didn’t take off until the latter declined, but the slave mortgages continued through the war.

watwut 7y ago
Yes, slavery makes slave owner more rich. But overall yankees were the ones doing competitive capitalism. People having their own small businesses that competes and treating your own work as something you sell. South society was more about everyone having his place and being supposed to stay there. Social classes, entrenched large plantations that work slaves instead of hiring people. Slaves dont competed in market by selling their work and whites would sell slaves work out of pride. Large chunk of economy was in slave ownership, it made people rich. But, it was not as much capitalism the way north was as a result.
- roboys 7y ago
  Slaves were (if im not mistaken) the first asset that was securitized in the new world. People across Europe who never touched a slave got rich from the trade. "First, American planters organized new banks, usually in new states like Mississippi and Louisiana. Drawing up lists of slaves for collateral, the planters then mortgaged them to the banks they had created, enabling themselves to buy additional slaves to expand cotton production. To provide capital for those loans, the banks sold bonds to investors from around the globe — London, New York, Amsterdam, Paris. The bond buyers, many of whom lived in countries where slavery was illegal, didn’t own individual slaves — just bonds backed by their value. Planters’ mortgage payments paid the interest and the principle on these bond payments. Enslaved human beings had been, in modern financial lingo, “securitized." "Here is how the American slave-breeding industry worked, according to the Sublettes: Some states (most importantly Virginia) produced slaves as their main domestic crop. The price of slaves was anchored by industry in other states that consumed slaves in the production of rice and sugar, and constant territorial expansion. As long as the slave power continued to grow, breeders could literally bank on future demand and increasing prices. That made slaves not just a commodity, but the closest thing to money that white breeders had. It’s hard to quantify just how valuable people were as commodities, but the Sublettes try to convey it: By a conservative estimate, in 1860 the total value of American slaves was $4 billion, far more than the gold and silver then circulating nationally ($228.3 million, “most of it in the North,” the authors add), total currency ($435.4 million), and even the value of the South’s total farmland ($1.92 billion). Slaves were, to slavers, worth more than everything else they could imagine combined." https://kottke.org/16/02/a-history-of-the-slave-breeding-industry-in-the-united-states https://kottke.org/16/02/a-history-of-the-slave-breeding-ind...

sgt101 7y ago

The Californian gold rush was a big factor; it created a huge stimulus and liquidity injection, recapitalising US industry, infrastructure and fedral government. Ironically this empowered the north to contend with the south, freeing (in name and partially) the slaves of the south but condeming the peoples of the west to genocide.

roboys 7y ago
Don't forget all the opium money that was being poured into the North, killing Chinese people with overdoses was very profitable.