Robert William Fogel, Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989).

SYNOPSIS:

Fogel's book builds and extends his earlier work with Stanley Engerman in Time on the Cross. The book addresses many of the criticisms of their controversial work and more directly addresses the moral problem of slavery in American history. But Fogel's key argument in the development of the Republican Party and its successful national campaign in 1860 focuses on the "hidden depression" among Northern non-farm manual workers in the 1850s. He argues that these men represented about a quarter of the North's electorate and that they suffered from competition from immigrants, depressed wages, and declines in real income. At the same time, Fogel points out, prices for wheat, corn, and meat rose in the period on demand from shortages in Europe, making the non-farm worker poorer. He estimates the average decline in real income between 1848 and 1855 at 25 to 50 percent, and compares it to the economic misfortune in the Great Depression. These workers made up the key vote in the Republican column in 1860 and they were particularly receptive to Republican claims about the smothering role of the South and slavery in their present and future economic development.

EXCERPT:

"What were the conditions that permitted the economic arguments against slavery to become so much more effective in the mid-1850s than they had been in the 1830s or 1840s? The question is puzzling since the period 1843-1857, during which the economic critique of slavery rose to preeminence, is often portrayed as one of vigorous economic expansion and general prosperity. . . . One part of the free U.S. population failed to share in this prosperity. These were the non-farm manual workers, especially those in the North, and especially the native-born skilled males." (354-355)

"Indeed, the whole period from 1840 to 1858 was one of hard times for native-born manual workers, broken only by three interludes. The longest of these extended from 1844 to 1846 or 1847; the other two (1851-1852 and 1856) were much weaker and briefer." (356)

"Not only was the decline in the real income of native workers large, but it persisted for nearly a decade. The worst phase of their depression came during 1853-1855. Those were years of substantial decline in the nonagricultural demand for labor, with sagging wages and widespread layoffs in construction, iron, and lumber." (358)

"By the eve of the Civil War life expectation was 10 years less than it had been just before the turn of the century and males born in 1860 reached final heights that were about 1.5 inches less than those born in the early 1830s." (360)

"Whether it was under the Know-Nothing label (as in Massachusetts), under the Republican label (as in Michigan), or under the fusionist label (as in Ohio and Indiana), disgruntled Whigs and Democrats were separated from the "protective" shields of the old party machines. (383)

"However, by 1860 ex-Whig supporters within the Republican party outnumbered the ex-Democrats by roughly 7 to 1. It thus appears that the Republicans were able to capture about half of the Democrats but virtually all of the Whigs who strayed into the Know-Nothing party. Indeed, since many Whigs remained loyal to their party in 1854 and 1855, the eventual Whig "catch" of the Republicans considerably exceeded the number who passed through the Know-Nothing movement. The bulk of the Whig voters were farmers, and it was farmers who constituted the bulk of the Republican vote. Moreover, the richer the farmers, the more likely they were to vote Republican." (384)

RELATIONSHIP:

We agree with Fogel on the need to explain how the Republican Party's economic critique of slavery as damaging to white workers could have appeal in the expanding economy of the 1850s. Fogel's emphasis on the native non-farm workers and the hidden depression is persuasive. In Franklin County, however, the position of these workers in 1860 was not so tenuous as those he describes, and most were likely to have some property. The appeal of the Republicans' critique of slavery came not so much because financially strapped voters were receptive to it out of a sense of frustration but instead because the appeal accorded with the electorate's social experience. In communities across the North, as in Franklin County, the greatest concentrations of wealth lay in the rural agricultural areas not the cities and towns.

"In Franklin and Augusta men who listed their occupation as a laborer or day laborer often did not own any property or wealth at all. In Franklin these workers were more likely to have accumulated at least some property."

"In the first half of 1860 Republican editors in Franklin's Repository and Transcript attacked slavery as a violation of nature that stole from the workingman the fruits of his labor; they focused mainly on slavery's potential to undermine free labor."

"In Franklin County, John Breckinridge won a majority in six precincts, most of them in the far northern and western belt of the county, where few blacks lived and farmers planted corn not wheat."

"Lincoln won sixteen precincts in Franklin, ten of them by margins greater than 55 percent, with support mainly from the urban center of the county and places with the highest numbers of black residents--even though black men could not vote in Pennsylvania."