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SECOND-GUESSING THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR:
A Reassessment of Revisionism and Repressibility

CHAPTER TWO
Charles W. Ramsdell: The Question of Slavery's "Natural Limits"

Copyright © 1995 Dee Sparling

In 1858 Abraham Lincoln declared the following:

If we could arrest the spread of slavery, and place it where...it would be in the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind would...believe that it was in the course of ultimate extinction, the crisis would be past and the institution might be left alone for a hundred years, if it should live so long, in the States where it exists. 1

If two separate historiographies could be created, the Revisionists would be wisely placed in the one asking: Regardless of whether or not war eventually would have been required to deal with slavery (a virtually unanswerable question), did it need to be fought in 1861, before existing alternatives were even given a chance to succeed, or indeed before ulterior options had been conceived? This would distinguish between discussions which assume war was an inevitable reality best faced sooner than later, and those addressing the antebellum debate itself, a method less dependent on counterfactual speculation and more conducive to understanding the causality behind the historical fact of war.

Charles W. Ramsdell's "natural limits" thesis failed to account for this necessary distinction, an oversight which has nearly wrought the "ultimate extinction" of the entire perspective he inspired. Aware of the moral tightrope his position forced him to walk, he attempted to append fully demonstrable antebellum realities with a prediction of slavery's economic demise, basing this speculation on questionable data and arguments that have withered under the rather selective scrutiny of recent scholars. What began as a vindication of Stephen A. Douglas' "popular sovereignty" principle ended with an ill-advised conclusion regarding Southern economic destiny. In this way, Ramsdell exaggerated the dimension of his task by relating slavery's expansion to the issue of slavery's ultimate fate, a connection even Lincoln declined to confirm. Only expansion is of undisputed pertinence to Civil War causal ity, however, because it alone was outlined in the antebellum debate as the potential breaking point, a matter of national destiny and the issue that could not be sidelined. Both the "ultimate extinction" doctrine and the subsequent political success of Abraham Lincoln indicate effectively that a gradualist philosophy was quite palatable to the wider Northern electorate, providing eventual emancipation remained an abiding ideal. Ramsdell never needed to prove "how" slavery per se would ultimately be defeated in order to prove that the issue of its expansion was "repressible" in the 1850s.

His oversight was matched by the slavery-culturalists, who dismissed the entire thesis because this one element was flawed. Throwing "the baby out with the bath water," apparently innocently, they circumvented Ramsdell's admirable attempt to portray territorial realities, focusing instead on his ill-advised assessment of Old South probabilities, and successfully planting the impression that the "natural limits" theory was self-destructive. Not only were their own critiques speculative, and often flawed, but the arguments seldom addressed the startling agricultural and population statistics regarding the territories, centering instead upon Ramsdell's counterfactual sideshow in a less direct attempt to convince readers the numbers were irrelevant.

Several steps will be undertaken in this chapter. First, the back ground and purpose of Stephen A. Douglas' "popular sovereignty" principle will be outlined. Second, the key aspects of the "natural limits" thesis will be presented to establish the dual purpose of Ramsdell's position, namely (1) the vindication of "popular sovereignty" for the territories, appended with (2) a prediction of slavery's economic demise throughout the Union. Step three involves a statistical assessment of territorial realities to demonstrate the viability of the vindication. Step four presents two different critical approaches that raise doubts regarding his rather speculative economic prediction. However, certain inconsistencies also will be revealed within the critiques themselves, suggesting that an inconclusive debate over a secondary aspect of Ramsdell's position is not sufficient grounds for dismissing the entire thesis. Finally, it will be argued that his primary aim--to question the fear of slavery's expansion in light of territorial realities --remains quite viable today, was very pertinent to the antebellum debate itself, and hence is indispensable to any properly-balanced discussion of Civil War causation. With this outline in mind, the first task begins.

When Harry Jaffa condemns Stephen A. Douglas' alleged "amorality" he oversimplifies the Kansas-Nebraska Act by associating it with the singular issue of slavery.2 Thus it is not surprising that he infers "conspiracy" to explain legislation drafted with necessary consideration for Southern interests, and resulting in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Historians holding his viewpoint tend to ignore other antebellum realities, however, such as massive westward expansion and the need for organization,3 creating the convenient impression that Kansas-Nebraska was either a trumped-up political issue masking Slave-Power ambition, or simply a mistimed, career-motivated project pushed through by Douglas to enhance his own political status. No doubt the latter motivation touches on a truth, yet this in no way should obscure the wider reality that migration westward required the resolution of North ern and Southern concerns, either through compromise or confrontation.

Moreover, the geographical relevance of the Missouri Compromise Line (36o 30'N) was challenged implicitly only four years prior by the Compromise of 1850, which allowed slavery in the vast territories of Utah and New Mexico.4 Utah Territory in particular lay entirely north of the designated latitude, as did the northern third of New Mexico. While it is true that both lay west of the Louisiana Purchase, to which the Missouri Compromise originally applied, the initial settlement of 1820 had preceded the acquisition of these newer lands, and proved insufficient to deciding their status regarding slavery. By 1854 the American West was a confusing patchwork of territorial exceptions to an increasingly irrelevant concept. Therefore, to accept the enigmatic political and geographical status of Utah under the Compromise of 1850, yet reject the 1854 "repeal" of an increasingly decrepit ruling from 1820, is to engage in a selective form of criticism indeed. Nevertheless, many of Douglas' contemporaries, and later historians, have done just that, misreading pragmatism as a breach of national faith, and forgetting that the decades between 1820 and 1854 were peppered with improvisational approaches to juggling the great American paradox.5 Thus, even if one wishes to pinpoint a certain political event as the catalyst for some "irrepressible" slide into war, it is doubtful indeed that Kansas-Nebraska provides sufficient focus.

For this reason it is essential to distinguish between the motivation behind legislation and the subsequent reaction to it, a distinction Jaffa fails to make. Because renewed sectional hostility was the reaction, he somehow assumes self-interest rather than leadership motivated the Senator.6 After all, what other reason could be offered for this assault on national tranquillity? Curiously, when Lincoln's semantics eventually provoke far graver danger, words like "conspiracy" and "immorality" elude Jaffa's vocabulary.

Instead it might be stressed that "Kansas-Nebraska" revealed a keen reading of complications the nation would face if certain issues, such as land distribution, railroad routes, and labour systems, were ignored until they began to fester.7 Moreover, it might be questioned why Douglas should be held responsible for his critic's distortions, let alone be expected to anticipate them. For every pessimist, there seems to be an optimist. Thus Robert W. Johannsen and James C. Malin offer a different version of Douglas, applauding a national leader who under stood what needed to be done, and had the wherewithal to do it.8 The Senator was not acting from the point of view of a coming Civil War, nor could he have been. Rather, he was continuing the spirit of compromise that had enabled sectional tolerance for decades.

It was the reaction to his legislation that is crucial to under standing the connection between Kansas-Nebraska and Civil War causation. And any responsible assessment of this reaction must include far more than mere appeals to morality or outrage at assumed conspiracies; it must address the territorial realities which Douglas himself brought to the attention of his political foes in defense of his policies. The pragmatic Douglas understood how reality could ally itself with morality to effect results of which Northern rhetoricians could only dream,9 a clarity of vision shared by a twentieth-century admirer, Charles W. Ramsdell.

Responding to charges that the Kansas-Nebraska Act was a mere prelude to nationalizing slavery, Douglas countered that his aim was "to localize, not to nationalize, the controversy in regard to slavery," affirming the "great principle of self-government in the Territories, and the sovereignty of the States" over such matters.10 When the Dred Scott decision denied legitimacy to all antislavery legislation, from any level of government, Douglas appended his principle with a curious twist on the "laissez-faire" philosophy of government. His "Freeport Doctrine" suggested territorial legislatures "could lawfully exclude slavery, either by non-action or unfriendly legislation."11

"Popular sovereignty" in and of itself was without question a morally indifferent approach to western settlement, a point often raised by his political opponents.12 After all, the implication was that the first significant number of settlers to develop a given territory would decide its sociocultural flavour, and that would be that. Collectively, these territorial decisions might determine the nation's future ideals and moral destiny, without answering to the wider American electorate. On the surface, anyone with a true understanding of slavery's immorality can see merit in the concerns of his critics. All things being equal, "popular sovereignty" in principle was powerless to guarantee the preservation of antislavery imperatives.

However, all things were not equal, and Douglas recognized this. Many of his contemporaries lacked as keen a grasp on territorial realities and the concept of "utility." For him, the two were inseparable. Central to his faith in "popular sovereignty," as a means for settling the West even while defusing the slavery issue, was his confidence that climate, soil, and internal migration were ensuring "free soil" predominance throughout the vast regions of the frontier.13 Lopsided population ratios favouring "free soilers" over slaveholders would guarantee local electoral victories for Northern interests, creating a political atmosphere within which slavery could not conceivably "nationalize."14 Most importantly, this would be achieved through grassroots democracy, straight from the Jeffersonian tradition limiting federal control of regional and state affairs. As such, it provided a method with which Southern states' rights advocates could not reasonably argue, even as incoming results solidified the predominance of "free soil" ideology within the national fabric.15

Admittedly this all sounds a little too well-organized, almost as though Douglas "conspired" with "free soilers" rather than the "Slave Power." But this is just the point. Any proper examination of the possible intent behind his "morally-indifferent" method might easily reveal a morally-inspired appreciation of "utility" rather than a wicked conspiracy with slaveholders. And therein lies the possible difference between Douglas and his critics. They sought to curtail slavery's expansion; he sought to curtail it without threatening the Union. They saw one moral dilemma where he saw two.

Ramsdell has faced similar misreadings at the hands of his own contemporaries, which is hardly surprising given the antebellum roots of debate between slavery-culturalists and Revisionists. His "natural limits" thesis was the first serious attempt to vindicate Douglas, "popular sovereignty," and by implication the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Written with persuasive style, Ramsdell's piece mixes rhetoric with a reasonably objective analysis of data from the 1860 census. It begins with the obvious question: "Would slavery, if legally permitted to do so, have taken possession of the territories or of any considerable portion of them?"16 His conclusion is "no," a position resting upon two theoretical approaches, one stressing the agricultural, climatic, and demographic realities of the 1850s, the other speculating upon the future profitability of cotton and slavery.

His assessment of antebellum realities includes several major points. First, the political economy of slavery was geared toward certain cash crops, specifically cotton, rice, hemp, tobacco and sugar.17 Second, cotton and rice needed climatic and soil conditions significantly lacking in the territories. Land suitable for hemp, tobacco, and sugar was also scarce. And while grains could grow in abundance in the harsher climate, they seldom proved lucrative under a slave-labour system.18 Third, the territories lacked the transportation and market infrastructure necessary for cotton's profitability.19 Fourth, the demographic situation unfolding in eastern Kansas in the late 1850s indicated that even those small regions suited to slave-produced crops were being settled predominantly by "free soil" citizenry.20 In fact this applied everywhere along the frontier with the exception of the Texas plains region. Northern interests clearly were winning the demographic challenge. Finally, in a related point, he questions the relevance of a "Slave Power Conspiracy" in an age of rugged individualism, a time when farmers (slaveholder or otherwise) struggled to make ends meet and support their families, priorities conducive to an economic, rather than ideological, outlook on life.21

But he then predicts the entire system's imminent decline, arguing that even if all these disadvantages had been reversed or eradicated somehow, higher cotton yields would have been unprofitable anyway, given certain economic indications the market was nearing a glut.22 By 1858 cotton prices were falling in proportion to increased levels of supply, suggesting a potential decline in the capital value of slaves. Thus, insofar as one accepts the centrality of cotton to the slave economy, its very expansion would have further destabilized the system's economic viability, and hence its attraction to slaveholders.

This prediction committed subsequent "natural limits" advocates to proving and disproving counterfactual scenarios far in excess of what was required to answer Ramsdell's initial question with reasonable certainty. Rather than forcing sceptics to prove slavery would have over run the territories, in spite of the natural and political barriers both he and Douglas cited, he took the offensive unnecessarily, trying to remove slavery from the equation altogether. Yet his own statistical sources clearly place the onus on his critics to prove how demonstrable territorial realities could have been altered to accommodate slave-labour systems. And of course, this would require the same sort of counterfactual speculation they themselves have claimed verifies nothing.

Strangely, Ramsdell fails to use the 1860 census as fully as possible in defending his position. He does point out that in 1860 there were merely two slaves in Kansas, fifteen in Nebraska, and none in the territories of Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico combined.23 As surprisingly low as these figures seem, however, their true significance to "popular sovereignty" is understood fully only in comparison with "free soil" demographics, a step he neglects to take. For example, the 1860 census puts the population of Kansas at 107 206, of which 15 572 were farmers employing 3660 farm labourers.24 In comparison, the presence of only two slaves is rather startling.

Given the history of violent agitation and fraudulent constitutions in Kansas, and the consequent tainting of "popular sovereignty" for the region, scepticism may remain. However, the demographic comparison above reveals striking similarities when applied to more peaceful territories. For example, Utah Territory's forty thousand settlers included 3800 farmers, 670 agricultural workers, and only 29 slaves.25 Nebraska's population of 28 841 included four thousand farmers, 455 farm labourers, but only fifteen slaves.26 New Mexico's 93 516 inhabitants kept no slaves, as was also true for Nevada's small population of just under seven thousand.27 Both the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Dred Scott decision had apparently legalized slavery in the territories, yet the numbers betray the questionable relevance of these legislative formal ities to frontier realities.

Agricultural statistics also reveal the predominantly "free soil" nature of territorial settlement in 1860. For example, land distribution in these territories resembled that of the Northern United States, with the large majority of farms occupying no more than fifty acres.28 In Kansas, some 10 000 farms were at least three acres in size, but only eight exceeded five hundred.29 In comparison, land distribution in eastern Texas, where cotton was widely produced, more closely resembled the plantation South, with its high percentage of vast acreage hold ings.30

More importantly, production figures showed very low levels of crops traditionally associated with slave labour. Cane sugar was nonexistent in these regions.31 Cotton yielded only 136 bales in Utah, 61 in Kansas, 19 in New Mexico, and nothing in Nebraska.32 The largest tobacco crop amounted to 20 349 pounds in Kansas, which pales in comparison with Virginia's 124 million, or Kentucky's 108 million pounds.33 Tobacco harvests in New Mexico and Nebraska were considerably smaller still, at 7000 and 3600 pounds respectively.34 Not even population and work-force ratios between the new territories and the older states could begin to account for such massive discrepancies in production, which leaves factors such as climate, soil, and choice of crop as primary determinants.

Crops traditionally associated with Northern farms contributed huge harvests to the territorial economies. Indian corn, for example, yielded 6.1 million bushels in Kansas, 1.5 million in Nebraska, and 700 000 in New Mexico.35 Irish potatoes were measured by hundreds of thousands of bushels, true also for oats and wheat.36 Perhaps most significant was the wool produced, amounting to 490 000 pounds in New Mexico, 75 000 in Utah, and 25 000 in Kansas.37 It is difficult to imagine that territories supposedly being overrun by slaveholders, hungry for cash-crop revenues, would have devoted so much acreage to feeding sheep. One could go on to discuss production of butter, honey, barley, cheese, hay, and a host of other products. The list is exhaustive, but the point is clear.

Given the above figures, Ramsdell's assessment of territorial realities seems plausible, a reasonable basis for defending Douglas and the rationale behind "popular sovereignty." Demographics indicate distinctly low numbers of slaves in the western territories in 1860. Agricultural statistics reveal a preponderance of produce characteristic of "free soil" farming. Both these circumstances suggest an emergent "free soil" culture. Moreover, common sense dictates that the successful cultivation of various crops required certain climatic and soil conditions.

Yet in recent decades the "natural limits" thesis has come under increasing attack. The criticism has reflected varying approaches within the slavery-culturalist school. For example, those of the liberal-consensus subschool have levied the charge of "amorality" against Ramsdell,38 echoing the condemnation Douglas received from his contemporaries for reputedly leaving to chance any definitive solution to the slavery issue, and for denying the necessity of an immediatist approach. Describing the Civil War and its aftermath with phrases like the "second American Revolution,"39 these writers have perpetuated an American ideal we might call "the necessary price of freedom," then viewed with suspicion anyone suggesting it might have been paid for differently, though paid nonetheless.

The Marxist subschool has agreed with this judgement, supporting it with many detailed critiques of Ramsdell's content, and arguing that he underestimated Southern commitment to lifestyle, and even slavery's economic viability. These writers have attempted to provide the concept of "irrepressibility" with a sound statistical basis for proving slavery's durability, recognizing at least implicitly that moral justifications for the war require concrete verification that alternatives were lacking. Interestingly, their conclusions have splintered the historiography further, with one group arguing for slavery's economic stagnancy but ideological entrenchment,40 the other suggesting the economic flexibility and material appeal of the system,41 but both claiming their positions explain why slavery was woven irrevocably into Southern culture and its expansionism. As will be demonstrated, however, both tactics reveal their own idiosyncracies, and neither offer convincing reasons for applying assessments of Southern lifestyle and economics to regions where these essentially were non-factors in 1860.

It is tempting to address the moral criticism immediately to instill a sense of finality before moving on. However, the issue is better left to unfold slowly as the positions of all three Revisionists are outlined, verified, and defended, at least with respect to content and viability. The reasoning here is that the three elements are too entwined conceptually to require separate moral vindications. The attempt likely would prove repetitive, and less effective anyway. Besides, the charges of "amorality" usually are levied against the perspective in general, instead of individual contributors. In the end, the reader must decide the issue based on arguments presented.

Therefore, this chapter now turns to criticism of Ramsdell's content, beginning with the problem of Southern ideology and its bearing on the essentially economic approach of the "natural limits" thesis. For this there is no better starting point than the work of Eugene Genovese, who has written prolifically within the historiography of American slavery, and has related his conclusions to the issue of Civil War causation. Thus a look at his critique is a first vital step to assessing the viability of Ramsdell's position.

Genovese posits three main objections. First, he maintains the thesis is "self-contradictory . . . for it simultaneously asserts that slavery was nonexpansionist and that it would have perished without room to expand."42 Second, he questions the relevance of an economic emphasis, complaining that

. . . it rests on the untenable assumption that slavehold ers were merely ordinary capitalists who happened to have money in slaves but who might have come to see the advantage of investing differently--the assumption, that is, that no deep identification was made by the slaveholders of slavery with civilization, that slave ownership imbued the master class with no special set of values and interests incapable of being compromised.43

The latter two points reflect the fact that Ramsdell's economic focus challenges Genovese's ideological emphasis, a tension addressed momentarily. However, the initial charge of self-contradiction is ungrounded, for the very title "natural limits" implies slavery's potential for expansion, given specific climatic and soil conditions. Moreover, the work never states that slavery would have declined in lieu of room to expand, but rather that, had suitable land existed, free of political restrictions, the institution most certainly would have expanded--but to its own detriment! Ramsdell maintains that overproduction had already taken a toll on cotton prices by 1858, and that a continuation of this trend, augmented by expansion, would have diminished the price of slaves.45 Suddenly, "thousands of slaves would have become not only unprofitable but a heavy burden, the market for them gone."46 Clearly, Ramsdell senses a contradiction between the institution's expansionism and its better interests. In its economic tendency to expand lay its potential demise as a labour system. Regardless of whether Genovese agrees with the assessment, it is remarkable that a Marxist historian like himself has misperceived this subtle dialectic as self-contradiction.

A passage from the thesis itself suggests a way of answering Genovese's second charge, namely that Southern ideology has been underestimated. Ramsdell asks:

What would have been the effect of this upon the slave holder's attitude toward emancipation? No preachments about the sacredness of the institution and of constitutional guarantees would have compensated him for the dwindling values of his lands and slaves and the increasing burden of his debts. It should not be forgotten that the final formulation and acceptance of the so-called "proslavery philosophy" belonged to a time when slaveowners, in general, were prosperous.47

However, it must be noted that the fortunes of slavery clearly did change in the mid-Atlantic states between the Revolutionary era and the 1850s, in a manner challenging ideology's primacy in one of the oldest slave regions. Barbara Jeanne Fields looks at nineteenth-century Maryland in particular, suggesting the growing trend of widespread manumissions reflected not merely the influence of antislavery sentiments from nearby Northern states, but a practical, economic reaction on the part of planters to changing agricultural realities.48 A large-scale shift from the year-round labour requirements of tobacco cultivation to the more sporadic, seasonal demands of cereals meant "it made little sense to maintain a large slave force that could not be productively employed much of the time."49 Free labourers hired for critical planting and harvesting times represented the sensible alternative for such low maintenance crops. Hence, she maintains that

. . . the direction of Maryland's economic development lent an air of commonsense practicality to antislavery ideas while supplying sound reasons even for owners impervious to argument from moral, political, or religious principles to get rid of their slaves. Slave society in Maryland might have ideological difficulties making room for a class of free black people; but as long as agricultural renewal undermined the old tobacco-slave economy and new settlement favoured the free labor economy, the free black population was bound to grow in prominence.50

This suggests economic incentives could erode commitment to the prestige of slave-ownership, even in cases where ideology permeated the social environment sufficiently to foster conservatism and hesitation. And to argue simply that Maryland is not South Carolina misses the wider point that its slave-labour traditions were far older, and yet were still subject to change in response to altered circumstances. Clearly, planters in the Chesapeake region were capable of "compromising" slavery, if reluctantly.

Genovese's objection to cotton reductionism is a more effective criticism, even if somewhat confined by his insistence on the rigidity of Southern ideology. Ramsdell's emphasis on cotton may well be a weakness, ignoring the potential for widely varying slave occupations or even industrial slavery. Charles H. Wesley has pointed out the efficient, though scattered, use of slaves in some Southern industries, including cotton and tobacco factories, and even textile mills.51 Wesley also maintains, however, that allowing slaves to become artisans encouraged a certain self-sufficiency among them, which often was viewed by Southern whites as a subtle step toward racial equality, and there fore frowned upon.52 Ultimately, he feels, the underlying ideological inconsistency between slavery and industrialism made for their "incompatibility" within Southern political economy.53

Looking instead at Southern elites, Ronald L. Lewis claims sociopolitical competition between planters and industrialists inhibited full-scale cooperation between the controllers of slave labour pools and the owners of industrial plant.54 While essentially arguing that slavery in the coal and iron industries was workable, he nevertheless contrasts the advantage of absolute control over labour with the disadvantage of expecting efficiency, quality, and loyalty from workers under constant threat of punishment. Slave resistance was common. He points out that

even if slaves limited their resistance to relatively mild forms such as slowdowns or careless work habits, normal operations could be seriously hindered. In short, industrial slaves, and especially skilled craftsmen, were in a position to render financial damage to the industrialist's interests.55

Arguing that urban slavery was declining by 1860, Richard C. Wade blames this trend on the breakdown of social discipline among slaves, which resulted from "contact with people of all kinds," specifically free blacks, instilling a thirst for independence and freedom.57 Even whites dependent upon the black population, whether free or slave, for business or clientele, tended to ignore regulations enforcing a segregational atmosphere.58 For Wade, it was this erosion of control, rather than economic factors, that undermined the enthusiasm for urban slavery.

These three viewpoints offer varied grounds for doubting slavery's versatility, particularly in urban, industrial settings. They exhibit Genovese's own interpretation of ideology's negative effect on the for tunes of urban slavery. Of course, not all historians stress this interplay, choosing instead to highlight the economics of American slavery in general, and urban slavery in particular. Thus writers like Robert W. Fogel, Stanley L. Engerman, and Claudia Dale Goldin attack Ramsdell's "cotton reductionism" differently, in a manner to be detailed shortly. For now it must be stressed that Genovese himself has argued that slaveholder ideology hindered industrialization,59 rendering his charge of reductionism rather impotent. In fact a conceptual quirk emerges as Genovese criticizes Ramsdell's "reduction" of the slavery issue to the market fate of cotton, yet nevertheless implies that ideology dictated a cash-crop economy which, like it or not, was centred upon this slave-produced staple.

Perhaps this explains Genovese's focus on slavery in the mining industry as an alternative to cotton agriculture.60 One can easily accept that profits from precious metals would have ensured the economic feasibility of this prospect, while the isolation of remote digs, especially in the sparsely populated territorial regions, would have dampened any potential ideological "incompatibility." The financial returns from a proven mine likely would have outweighed a slave-owner's concern for the safety of human assets. He cites the lucrative slave mines of Brazil as a historical precedent of which Southern leaders were well aware.61

However, remote mining enterprises do not necessarily translate into political power in the territories, which brings us back to the larger issue at stake in his critique of the "natural limits" thesis, namely ideological versus economic understandings of slavery's expansion. If, as Genovese contends, the desire for a "Southern way of life" was the true impetus behind slavery's expansionism, the census figures nonetheless demonstrate the growing dominance of a "free soil" culture. Even he agrees this was the case. In a pivotal statement, he acknowledges:

If the South had to expand to survive, it paradoxically could not do so when given the opportunity. Unsettled political conditions prevented the immigration of slave property, much as the threat of nationalization or of a left wing or nationalist coup prevents the flow of American capital to some underdeveloped countries to which it is invited . . . . Slave property necessarily moved cautiously and slowly. So long as it had to move at the pace set by Northern farmers, it would be defeated. The mere fact of competition discouraged the movement of slaveholders, and if they were willing to move, they could not hope to carry enough whites to win.62

He then concedes:

Many Southern nonslaveholders could be and were converted to the antislavery banner once they found themselves away from the power and influence of the slaveholders. . . . Their allegiance to the system rested ultimately on the ability of the slaveholders to retain political power and social and ideological leadership and to prevent these men of the lower classes from seeing an alternative way of life.63

But this raises several concerns. First, if one argues that neither slaveholders nor would-be slaveholders were a credible threat to a grow ing "free soil" ideology in the territories, it is rather odd to criticize Ramsdell's conclusions regarding demographic migration. Second, Genovese needs to distinguish more effectively between a cultural ideology transcending class strata, and a class ideology relying solely on political hegemony. The former implies that the vast majority of Southerners, regardless of social ranking, intuitively aspired to slave-ownership and felt justified in this for personal and/or cultural reasons. If this was the case, one must question why it was that "many Southern nonslaveholders" could be "converted to the antislavery banner" so easily on the frontier. The latter suggests that Southern ideology reflected merely the interests of the master class, lacking any broad sociocultural foundation beyond simple manipulation, agitation and promises of social status. If this was the case, then one may question the term "ideology" being applied at all to what basically was a supervised ignorance easily enlightened whenever settlers left the Southern fold for the western territories, only to find "an alternative way of life" that could bring social prestige and economic prosperity in other forms.

Either way, the larger point is that Genovese's ideological argument may be compelling, even interesting, but it lacks sufficient internal consistency to warrant any convincing or even conclusive application to territorial realities, especially settler migrations, motivations, and settlement patterns. Some simple questions could be asked: How were Southern settlers "converted to the antislavery banner?" Were antislavery and proslavery sentiments the only determinants in the daily existence and concerns of Americans, whether Southern or Northern? Could it be that economic factors, influenced by natural conditions like soil, climate and geography, "encouraged" would-be slaveholders to adopt a "free soil" stance when they no longer stood to gain materially from slave ownership and proslavery philosophy? Most importantly, is it necessary to explain mere fairweather loyalty in terms of solid moral reasoning, when it might be explained in terms of economic necessity?

Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman offer a radically different reason for believing slavery would have survived indefinitely. Their controversial book, Time On The Cross, is a cliometric study arguing for slavery's economic feasibility, and its potential for growth even within an industrializing nation.64 As such, it undercuts Genovese by suggesting ideology is of secondary importance when a system provides sufficient economic incentive for its perpetuation. But more importantly, their arguments revolutionize traditional accounts of slave-labour economics, shared by both Genovese and Ramsdell,65 and cast considerable doubt on the latter's prediction of slavery's imminent decline. This offers a far stronger repudiation of the "natural limits" concept than Genovese could hope to achieve, for the simple reason that they use Ramsdell's own economic medium to reach a diametrically-opposed conclusion.

They offer a long list of objections, the first two of which address Genovese and Ramsdell respectively:

1. Slavery was not a system irrationally kept in existence by plantation owners who failed to perceive or were indifferent to their best economic interests. The purchase of a slave was generally a highly profitable investment which yielded rates of return that compared favorably with the most outstanding investment opportunities in manufacturing. 2. The slave system was not economically moribund on the eve of the Civil War. There is no evidence that economic forces alone would have soon brought slavery to an end without the necessity of a war or some other form of political intervention. Quite the contrary; as the Civil War approached, slavery as an economic system was never stronger and the trend was toward even further entrenchment.66

In supporting the first point they go to considerable trouble to demonstrate the shrewd business acumen of the planter class, paying particular attention to the pricing of slaves, which involved complicated assessments of variables like sex, age, physical strength, and projected net incomes for buyers.67 They focus also on the widespread use of innovative techniques for soil improvement and crop rotation.68 Support for the second point involves showing how Ramsdell's own evidence for slavery's decline is inconclusive at best, for it places undue emphasis on short term fluctuations in cotton prices.69 They also maintain that the ratio of suitable land to available labour was steadily rising, further evidence that the capital value of slaves might have increased in real terms for several decades beyond the fateful year of 1861. Thus it appears that steady growth was the reality for the Southern slave economy, not "stagnancy" or "decline."

But the real threat to Ramsdell's position comes with their assertion that

the course of slavery in the cities does not prove that slavery was incompatible with an industrial system or that slaves were unable to cope with an industrial regimen. Slaves employed in industry compared favorably with free workers in diligence and efficiency. Far from declining, the demand for slaves was actually increasing more rapidly in urban areas than in the countryside.70

As convincing as their numbers and computations appear, several idiosyncracies permeate their work. First, despite repudiating Genovese's ideological determinism, they imply paradoxically that slavery's appeal was economic, but that Southerners would take steps to ensure its profitability through a tireless process of innovation designed specifically with slavery in mind. This apparent self-contradiction emerges for a simple reason: Given the unpredictable nature of human invention, it is the only feasible way to allege simultaneously that economic motives were primary, but that the system nevertheless was permanently entrenched, while ignoring the possibility that economic decisions might lead to previously unheard-of industrial concepts ill-suited to a slave-labour system.

However, the position narrowly escapes clear self-contradiction by emphasizing the ease with which slavery might have been adapted, leaving them room to downplay ideology's relevance without rejecting it totally. Yet a problem emerges when Fogel and Engerman attempt to account for fluctuating slave populations in Southern cities. They ask rhetorically:

Why then did the slave population of the cities decline? Because the cities had to compete with the countryside for a supply of slaves whose growth was limited to the rate of natural increase. During those decades in which the combined rural and urban demand was growing more rapidly than the supply of slaves, prices of slaves were forced up. Both the city and countryside reacted to the rise in price, but in substantially different ways. In the rural areas there were no close substitutes for slave labor. In the language of economists, the rural demand for slaves was highly "inelastic." In the cities, however, free labor, particularly immigrant labor, proved to be a very effective substitute. This made the urban demand for slaves quite "elastic." Consequently, as the competition of the cities and countryside forced the price of slaves up relative to the price of free labor, the cities shifted toward the relatively cheaper form of labor. In other words, slaves were shifted from the cities to the countryside not because the cities didn't want slaves, but because as slave prices rose, it was easier for the cities than the countryside to find acceptable, lower-cost alternatives to slave labor.73

to say that they could be had more cheaply than slaves is only another way of affirming that urban employers found slavery as a system less appropriate to the task of filling the need for hands than was a capitalistically organized free labour.74

Therefore, the fact of slavery's profitability by no means guarantees its continued use when faced with even more lucrative alternatives, unless of course ideological devotion is a serious factor after all. If they wish to argue that slaveowners were rationally-motivated capital ists, then technological innovation and human ingenuity might be necessary guarantors of slavery's perpetuity, but far from sufficient. Any given innovation might prove profitable under slave-labour, or perhaps not. Any given invention might increase slavery's potential, or hasten its obsolescence. If money was the prime motivator, then the true danger to slavery transcended issues of stagnancy versus prosperity, lying instead with the lingering potential for greater wealth independent of slave ownership. In criticizing the Genovese position, Fogel and Engerman suggest this themselves:

In this context it appeared to be sufficient merely to cite evidence which suggested that prestige attached to the ownership of slaves. Yet surely prestige attaches to the ownership of most assets of great value which bring high rates of return to their owners. To show that the owner ship of slaves and prestige were positively correlated does not settle the issue of causality. Was the price of slaves high because the ownership of slaves brought prestige, or did the ownership of slaves bring prestige because their price was so high?75

Therefore, proving slavery's economic viability under a limited set of conditions is not equal to projecting its continued prosperity within changing economic and social environments. Even a Fogel and Engerman supporter like Claudia Goldin admits that "few can imagine American black slavery surviving in an advanced industrial economy."76 She reasons that "modern transportation networks, increased education, and industrial growth would all have led to its downfall." Fields also prefers the economic approach, but disagrees with the Fogel and Engerman position. She guards against viewing industrial slavery as "a mode of production," warning that

the great source of error on this point is the failure to distinguish between slaves as individuals and slavery as a system. Certainly individual slaves were successfully employed in urban factories. But that does not mean that slavery provided the basis of urban industry.77

Yet Fogel and Engerman cannot circumvent this uncertainty by conceding any significant ideological commitment to slavery for slavery's sake. To do so would place them alongside Genovese in provoking another unresolved debate concerning the relative effects of slaveholder ideology upon the entrepreneurial spirit of Southern industry, the very dilemma they have tried to sideline.

Herbert G. Gutman uncovers another idiosyncracy. Chiding Fogel and Engerman with the same sarcasm he feels they have levied at others, he assures that

the intelligent reader does not need to know the difference between a chi-square test and a multiple-regression analysis to learn that ordinary enslaved Afro-Americans did not conform to the patterns of beliefs and behavior emphasized in T/C.79

In the wider sense, one can suggest that any theory arguing for slavery's occupational versatility must take into account the potential impact of slave intransigence on efficiency, and hence profitability. If slaves are viewed by historians as selfless automatons blindly devoted to their overseer's job-security and their master's profits, it might reasonably be assumed that innovation and feasibility were not limited by the nature of the work force. However, if slave complicity is in doubt, one can argue that experimentation could have been stunted by fear of financial ruin. Given the unresolved issues of slave-labour efficiency and complicity, and the dampening effect this might have had on the capitalist spirit of innovation, one might question the confidence with which Fogel and Engerman predict the widening versatility of slave-labour, an issue considerably more complex than merely demonstrating economic prosperity.

But the most profound criticism is that Fogel and Engerman feel they have refuted the "natural limits" thesis when in fact they have barely addressed it. Like Genovese, they fail to realize that their calculations, hypothetical machinations, and counterfactual speculation over Ramsdell's own suppositions have little to do with antebellum territorial realities, the primary focus and concern of his thesis. In truth, their tangential discussions involve arguments hardly verified even within their own contexts, but that somehow are presumed central to the issue of Civil War causation. While their upgraded research methods do cast doubt on Ramsdell's assessment of slavery's economic viability, the debate over expansion and flexibility remains inconclusive even with respect to areas where the institution was firmly entrenched, let alone where it was virtually non-existent (a vital point to consider).

Several points must be stressed here. First, the prosperity of agricultural slavery in frontier territories would have required commensurate soil, climatic, and demographic conditions, none of which were present, and all of which were unlikely to be established. Ramsdell points out that cotton planters in the great plains region of Texas wrestled with drought and experimentaion until the century's end before production of the crop became economically feasible.82 Considering the arid soils of New Mexico and Nevada, or the temperature and climatic conditions of Utah, Colorado, Kansas, and Nebraska's territory (which at the time stretched north to the Canadian border), the intensity of the struggle in Texas alone acquires added significance. All of this assumes "free soil" settlers would have politely postponed their own migration.

Second, it must be stressed that Ramsdell's emphasis on cotton's centrality is not reductionist, as charged by Genovese, Fogel, and Engerman, nor does he ignore other slave-produced staples like cane sugar, tobacco, and hemp. Of some 3.2 million American slaves in 1850, 2.5 million were used in growing these products.83 Cotton accounted for 1.8 million of them, with 350 000 working in tobacco, 150 000 in sugar, 125 000 in rice (which Ramsdell does overlook), and 60 000 producing hemp. Therefore, less than twenty-five percent of the nation's slaves were engaged in either "non-agricultural pursuits" considered suitable for them, such as domestic servants, textile workers, miners, factory workers, and various areas of artisanry, or whatever alternative agricultural pursuits deemed essential enough to divert slave labour from the more lucrative cash crops. Clearly the four agricultural products accounted for by Ramsdell dominated the Southern economy, with the production of cotton alone occupying the lives of more than fifty percent of slaves.

Finally, it is doubtful that industrial slavery, minimal even in the urban areas of the Old South, constituted any immediate threat to "free soil" interests in the undeveloped West. As well, the keeping of domestic servants would have entailed "conspicuous consumption" levels more characteristic of plantation prosperity than the austerity of frontier grain and stock farming.84 Further, the potential for the profitable use of slaves in "free soil" methods of agriculture has been questioned by historians, and was becoming irrelevant regardless. The mechanization of such farming had been increasing rapidly through the 1850's,85 drastically reducing labour requirements that were predominantly seasonal anyway, and therefore not economically conducive to maintaining slave-labour pools. Writing for De Bow's Review in 1867, Edwin Q. Bell observed that

no corn raiser of the North plants by hand; even the ungainly potato has been reconciled and is now quietly and regularly inserted in its bed by the unthinking machine.86

In sum, Ramsdell's "natural limits" thesis remains plausible, despite the above critique. Insofar as his argument concerns the status of western territories, their role in Civil War causation, and the defense of "popular sovereignty," acknowledging the profitability of slavery does little damage to the position or the Revisionist perspective in general. This is true for two reasons. First, as shown earlier, in practical terms slavery was essentially a non-issue in the territories, let alone a proven profitable venture on any generalized scale. There were less than one hundred slaves in the region, compared with 3.2 million in Texas and the Old South. To argue that the prosperity of the Southern economy means slavery would have flourished in the Dakotas, New Mexico and Colorado entails a monumental presumption, given the lack of empirical evidence. Second, this lack of evidence is itself supportive of Ramsdell. Ironically, it is the Revisionists who are criticized for counterfactualism. Ramsdell's appeal to soil, climate, and demographics merely "tells it like it was," so to speak.

But perhaps most importantly, the prosperity of slavery in the Old South was of dubious relevance even to Abraham Lincoln. Insofar as one accepts the centrality of the territorial question to the debate over Civil War causation, something implied by the "ultimate extinction" doctrine, it appears that slavery's profitability is not terribly significant for Ramsdell's wider position anyway. All told, hindsight suggests he should have based his thesis strictly upon territorial realities, avoiding the debate over Southern political economy and ultimately escaping what Gutman calls "the numbers game." This oversight confused two very distinct issues--slavery's alleged expansion in the 1850s versus the question of its eventual fate.

Nevertheless, the "natural limits" thesis remains viable. It is reasonable to posit that natural and social environments may have allowed for the peaceful settlement or "repressibility" of the slavery issue in the territories, on the basis of the "popular sovereignty" principle and the Freeport Doctrine.

It should now be possible to show that Ramsdell's benefit of twentieth-century hindsight does not diminish the contention that "repressibility" should have been apparent to the generation responsible for the conflict, and indeed was to certain of its influential members. To do this, the study now turns to the theme of agitation and emotionalism, proposed by one of Ramsdell's Revisionist colleagues--Avery Craven.

Notes

1. Elbert B. Smith, The Death Of Slavery: The United States, 1837-65 (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1967), p. 143.

2. Jaffa, pp. 347-349 and 405-409. Jaffa has a tendency to judge Douglas' racism by twentieth-century standards of social etiquette, forgetting that white racial "superiority" was a widely accepted nineteenth-century assumption, shared even by some of the most liberal-minded abolitionists.

3. James C. Malin, The Nebraska Question, 1852-1854 (Lawrence, Kansas.: James C. Malin, 1953), p. 7.; Robert W. Johannsen, The Frontier, The Union, And Stephen A. Douglas (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989), pp. 84-85.

4. William L. Barney, The Passage Of The Republic: An Interdisciplinary History Of Nineteenth-Century America (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath and Company, 1987), p. 173.

5. Examples include the Missouri Compromise itself, the Compromise Tariff of 1833 resolving the twofold dilemma of Nullification and the Force Bill, and the Compromise Resolutions of 1850 defusing the politically explosive issue of the Mexican cession and the Wilmot Proviso. Compromise was the rule of the Union, not the exception. "Kansas-Nebraska" continued this trend in response to the pressing needs of westward migration.

6. Jaffa, pp. 405-409.

7. Johannsen, The Frontier, p. 95.; Malin feels "there is no legitimate purpose to be served in the mid-twentieth century for historians to pretend either that Douglas raised the issue, or that the issue was not already before the session of congress which opened in December 1853. His compromise proviso, or formula, was to quench the new fire before it spread." He maintains that "the success of the great compromises of 1820-21, 1833, and 1850, was tested by the measuring stick of whether they prevented or postponed the crisis from leading into dissolution of the Union, or resort to force to prevent it. The Douglas compromise of 1854 met that test. To blame Douglas with conspiring against freedom was like blaming fire fighters for starting the fire, because they built a backfire or demolished buildings in the path of the flames as a means of stopping them." See Malin, p. 14.

8. Malin, p. 14.; Johannsen, The Frontier, p. 206.

9. Johannsen, The Frontier, pp. 94 and 194. Johannsen quotes Douglas as stating that "the people would decide against slavery if left to settle the question for themselves."

10. From a Senate speech given by Douglas on March 22nd, 1858, as compiled in John C. Rives, Appendix To The Congressional Globe: Containing Speeches, Important States Papers, Laws, Etc., Of The First Session Of The Thirty-Fifth Congress (Washington, D.C.: Office of John C. Rives, 1858), pp. 194-195.

11. From a letter Douglas wrote to the editors of the San Francisco National, dated August 16, 1859, in Robert W. Johannsen (Ed.), The Letters Of Stephen A. Douglas (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961), p. 455.

12. Levine, p.212.; Robert W. Johannsen, Lincoln, The South, And Slavery: The Political Dimension (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1991), pp. 73-74.

13. Johannsen, The Frontier, pp. 193-195.

14. Levine, p. 195.

15. Some Southern states rights advocates did raise objections to "popular sovereignty," understanding fully the implications of its application. A few were highly suspicious of Douglas anyway, for he was known to have lobbied for a free-homestead policy for indepen dent Northern farmers. See Johannsen, The Frontier, p. 94.

16. Ramsdell, "The Natural Limits," p. 152.

17. Ibid., pp. 153-157.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid., pp. 155-156.

20. Ibid., pp. 162-163.

21. Ibid., pp. 153 and 163.

22. Ibid., pp. 169-170.

23. Ibid., pp. 160-167.

24. Population Of The United States In 1860: Compiled From The Original Returns Of The Eigth Census, by Joseph C.G. Kennedy (Superintendent of Census), under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1864), pp. 161 and 167.

25. Ibid., pp. 574-575 and 578-579.

26. Ibid., pp. 556-557 and 561.

27. Ibid., for New Mexico see pp. 566-567; for Nevada, pp. 562-563.

28. Agriculture Of The United States In 1860: Compiled From The Original Returns Of The Eigth Census, by Joseph C.G. Kennedy (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1864), pp. 197-221.

29. Ibid., p. 200.

30. Ibid., pp. 214-217. This statement is based on comparison between Texas and South Carolina. For further evidence, see appro priate tables covering other Southern states.

31. Ibid., p. xcix.

32. Ibid., see respective territorial tables for figures presented.

33. Ibid., p. xcviii for Kansas; p. xcvi for Virginia and Kentucky.

34. Ibid., see tables for New Mexico and Nebraska.

35. Ibid., see tables for Kansas, Nebraska and New Mexico.

36. Ibid., see tables for territories.

37. Ibid., see tables for territories.

38. Stampp contends that an "attitude of moral indifference--the feeling that slavery was hardly a matter over which sane men and women would create a crisis--is evident in much revisionist writ ing." See Stampp, The Imperiled Union, p.200.; Jaffa declares that "the only moral justification of Douglas's policy--as of revisionist historiography--is a tacit belief in the idea of progress, an idea that economic forces were `inevitably' working for freedom, both on the plains of Kansas and elsewhere. Only such a belief could jus tify the principle that all harsh moral alternatives were to be avoided, that one could safely `agree to disagree.'" See Jaffa, pp. 408-409.

39. James M. McPherson, Abraham Lincoln And The Second American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); see also Levine, p. 242.

40. Ulrich Bonnell Phillips pioneered this perspective, providing much groundwork for Eugene D. Genovese's Marxist variation on the theme.

41. This newer perspective emerged from the work of Conrad and Meyer with cliometric methods of analysis. Allowing a quantitative approach to history, cliometric analysis supposedly meant the disci pline was becoming more scientific, enabling greater objectivity in weighing or even challenging the assumptions of previous historiog raphy. Though controversial, its appeal was sufficient to spawn a subschool led by Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman.

42. From "The Origins Of Slavery Expansionism," a chapter from Eugene Genovese's The Political Economy Of Slavery (New York, 1967), in Edwin C. Rozwenc (Editor), The Causes Of The American Civil War, 2nd Edition (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath and Company, 1972), p.252.

43. Ibid., pp. 251-252.

44. Ibid., P. 253.

45. Ramsdell, "The Natural Limits," pp. 168-170.

46. Ibid., pp. 169-170.

47. Ibid., pp. 170-171.

48. Barbara Jeanne Fields, Slavery And Freedom On The Middle Ground: Maryland During The Nineteenth Century (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 5.

49. Ibid.

50. Ibid., pp. 5-6.

51. Charles H. Wesley, "Slavery And Industrialism," in James E. Newton and Ronald L. Lewis, The Other Slaves: Mechanics, Artisans And Craftsmen (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1978), pp. 29-31.

52. Ibid., pp. 33-34.

53. Ibid., pp. 34-35.

54. Ronald L. Lewis, Coal, Iron, And Slaves: Industrial Slavery In Maryland And Virginia, 1715-1865 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979), p. 219-231.

55. Ibid., p.111.

56. Ibid., pp. 111 and 224.

57. Richard C. Wade, Slavery In The Cities: The South 1820-1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), pp. 243-252.

58. Ibid., pp. 252-256.

59. Eugene Genovese, The Political Economy Of Slavery: Studies In The Economy And Society Of The Slave South (New York: Random House, 1967). p. 235.

60. Ibid., pp. 256-260.

61. Ibid., p. 256.

62. Ibid., pp. 264-265.

63. Ibid., p. 265.

64. Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time On The Cross: The Economics Of American Negro Slavery (Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1974).

65. Ibid., pp. 63-71.

66. Ibid., p. 4.

67. Ibid., pp. 67-78 and 197-198.

68. Ibid., p. 63. For a more detailed affirmation of Southern agricultural innovation and economic sophistication, see Fogel, Without Consent Or Contract: The Rise And Fall Of American Slavery (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1989), pp. 64-113. Ralph V. Anderson and Robert E. Gallman agree that innovations like crop diversification, new seed types, and experimental work routines led to increased self-sufficiency on the plantation level. However, they suggest this apparent advantage contributed to Southern "underdevelopment" in general by hindering intra-regional trade and the associated processes of urbanization that draw from "farm-town economic interactions." See Anderson and Gallman, "Slaves As Fixed Capital: Slave Labor And Southern Economic Development," J.A.H., 64 (June 1977, #1): 38 and 46.

69. Fogel and Engerman, Time On The Cross, pp. 96-97.

70. Ibid., p. 5.

71. Ibid., pp. 38-43.

72. Ibid., pp.101-102.

73. Ibid., p. 102.

74. Fields, p. 55.

75. Fogel and Engerman, p. 71.

76. Claudia Dale Goldin, Urban Slavery In The American South, 1820-1860: A Quantitative History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. 126.

77. Fields, p. 54.

78. Ibid., pp. 54-55.

79. Herbert G. Gutman, Slavery And The Numbers Game: A Critique Of Time On The Cross (Chicago: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1975), p. 3. 80. Ibid., "A New Myth Replaces An Old Myth," pp. 86-87; "The Transformation Of Slave Work Habits And The Protestant Work Ethic," pp. 15-17.

81. Ibid., pp. 17-41.

82. Ramsdell, "The Natural Limits," p. 157.

83. All figures are from Wesley, in Newton and Lewis, pp. 21-22.

84. "Conspicuous consumption" describes the spending of capital on luxury items or for purposes other than reinvesting in the domestic economic infrastructure, or "home market" (to borrow Genovese's abbreviated term).

85. The contemporary commentary in Agriculture Of The United States In 1860 applauds advances in agricultural and horticultural imple ments and machinery that apparently had won the respect of foreign ers at a science and technology exhibition in London, England, in 1851. It states, "Fortunately, the people of this country have not been slow to adopt the most efficient substitutes for animal power, and the inventive talent of the nation has found an ample and remun erating field for its exercise in originating and perfecting instru ments adopted to all the wants of the farmer and planter" (pp. xii- xiii).

86. Edwin Q. Bell, "In Lieu Of Labor," originally published in De Bow's Review, see Paul F. Paskoff and Daniel J. Wilson (Eds.), The Cause Of The South: Selections From De Bow's Review, 1846-1867 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982), p. 136.

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