John D. Majewski, A House Dividing: Economic Development in Pennsylvania and Virginia Before the Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

SYNOPSIS:

Majewski's quantitative study compares Virginia and Pennsylvania, looking especially at a county in each state--Cumberland, Pennsylvania, and Albemarle, Virginia. His purpose is to "understand the roots of regional divergence" and he finds them in the economic structures of the two places and how economic policies shaped the trajectories of growth and development. He is particularly interested in the growth of Philadelphia and its effect on the hinterland surrounding it. Part of Majewski's purpose is to "isolate the impact of slavery" (3) on the course of economic development. Majewski concludes that Virginia's low population density was the "Achilles' heel" of its economy and that slavery was to blame for this weakness. Farmers, planters, and slaves spread across the countryside could not develop the necessary consumer demand for self-reinforcing growth that compared to Pennsylvania's towns and major city--Philadelphia. (128)

EXCERPT:

"Virginia's transportation network remained highly localized with little integration; no intersectional trunk lines connected Virginia's cities to Midwestern markets; and the manufacturing base remained small, especially in relation to northern states. The central problem was that Virginia's slave economy discouraged the development of a large commercial city that could provide investors, traffic and passengers for major transportation projects." (3)

Virginia planter John Cocke "correctly surmised that the Old Dominion's urban landscape--a collection of small cities vigorously competing for commerce and trade--had undermined Virginia's program of state investment." (112)

"Slavery also discouraged the development of towns, thus putting an additional brake on the growth of consumer demand. Because slaveholders had an economic incentive to keep their workers busy all year around, many plantations were often diversified enterprises that grew their own food, employed their own carpenters, and owned their own mills. Smaller farmers needing such services often turned to their wealthier neighbors to hire out a skilled artisan or utilize the plantation's blacksmith. Virginia towns, therefore, had relatively little to do with the day-to-day operations of a plantation outside of marketing its crops." (160)

"Fertile soils, dense networks of family farms, thriving towns, and close proximity to booming urban markets all helped make Cumberland a showcase for northern agriculture. Travelers frequently commented on the beauty of the small, neat farms and well-kept countryside." (43)

"Virginia and Pennsylvania, I conclude, became a house divided because of the Old Dominion's failure to develop a large commercial city . . . A major aim of this book is to explain how Philadelphia launched itself into a cycle of self-reinforcing growth." (3)

"Rather than focusing scholarly energy on the 'capitalist' versus 'anticapitalist' interpretations of planter behavior, the comparison of Pennsylvania and Virginia railroads shows how urban capital greatly sharpened the regional differences between the two states." (139)

"While Philadelphia's economy benefited from agglomeration, urban growth in Virginia stagnated because slavery discouraged rural population growth, thereby limiting the size of potential markets." (158)

RELATIONSHIP:

Majewski's emphasis on population density and the generally forward-looking ideology of Virginia corresponds with our own interpretation. Majewski's concern is to explain why Virginia with all of its capital and investment failed to develop "a true central place" that could accelerate industrial growth. Ours is to explain the social logic of communities in Pennsylvania and Virginia that would allow political expression to result in the conflict and crisis of secession. Majewski's counties are both contiguous to our counties, and his data on density, wealth, farm values, industrial concentration, and capital investment compare closely with ours. We differ with Majewski's emphasis on slavery as a hindrance to economic growth and a suffocating system, instead seeing it as productive, widely adopted and adapted by Augustans.

"Newspapers in Franklin were little different from those in Augusta, but the orientation of the Repository and Transcript as the lead Republican paper set the county apart from its neighbors and from those in the South."

"Slaveholders in Augusta did not monopolize the best soil nor did they crowd out nonslaveholders or small slaveholders."

"Although Franklin's wealth was concentrated in its rural agricultural commodities, the county was a commercial hub with numerous businesses and shops more densely concentrated than its Southern counterpart."

"The Chambersburg newspapers sold a greater range of products than their counterparts in Staunton, and businesses there faced greater competition as well."

"Chambersburg was a larger place than Staunton, but no more vibrant or connected to the market than its Southern counterpart."

"Franklin and Augusta exhibited different spatial organizations, with a more organized and commercial approach in Franklin and a settlement in Augusta that followed the contours of soil and land more closely."

"In Franklin black residents lived clustered in towns and segregated from whites, their position in the county secure only in their tightly defined communities."

"Black people enslaved in Augusta married, raised families, and worked at all sorts of jobs, but they were never far removed from the tangled affairs of whites."