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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

The 1619 project has walked back the central claim of the lead essay: https://quillette.com/2020/09/19/down-the-1619-projects-memo...

The original version of the lead essay said: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/magazine/we-respond-to-th...

> one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery

The current version adds two key words that totally change the meaning: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/blac...

> one of the primary reasons some of the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.

These two statements are totally different. “One of the primary things the Democrats want is to defund the police” is obviously not true. “One of the primary things some of the Democrats want is to defund the police” is obviously true, but means something totally different.

The 1619 Project’s hit piece on capitalism was so bad that Jacobin had to step in with a correction piece: https://jacobinmag.com/2019/08/how-slavery-shaped-american-c...

> Desmond begins his article by drawing on the Harvard historian Sven Beckert who argues that “it was on the back of cotton, and thus on the backs of slaves, that the U.S. economy ascended in the world.” Yet Desmond neglects to mention that this claim has been widely rejected by specialists in the economic history of slavery.

The Jacobin piece even discusses better arguments the NYT could have made, such as slavery being a reason for the US’s particularly strong protection of private property. That’s debatable, but at least it’s within the realm of the mainstream thought among historians.

View on HN

The central claim of the lead essay seems to be that "[The US's] founding ideals were false when they were written". Perhaps you mean "a" central claim?

Maybe the “central novel claim” of the essay. All schoolchildren know Jefferson was being a hypocrite in declaring “all men are created equal” while owning other people. That was taught to us when I was in school in Virginia, a curriculum that otherwise venerated Jefferson. The idea that the founders were primarily motivated to break from Britain to protect slavery is what attracted so much attention, because it was novel. Unfortunately, it was novel because most historians don’t think that’s true.

There is a real story here: people don’t appreciate the scope of things that were affected and influenced by the institution of slavery. But the New York Times went far beyond that in its bombastic claims: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/13/magazine/1619-project-liv...

> The goal of the project is to deepen understanding of American history (and the American present) by proposing a new point of origin for our national story. In the days and weeks to come, we will publish essays demonstrating that nearly everything that has made America exceptional grew out of slavery.

Deepening the understanding of American history is good. But claiming that “nearly everything that has made America exceptional grew out of slavery” is demagoguery. America didn’t rebuild Europe after WWII because of slavery. It didn’t become the most successful immigrant country in the world because of slavery. Silicon Valley, the moon landing, and our raft of Nobel Laureates didn’t grow out of slavery.

> Maybe the “central novel claim” of the essay. All schoolchildren know Jefferson was being a hypocrite in declaring “all men are created equal” while owning other people.

I'd encourage you to ask that question of modern Republican leadership.

> But claiming that “nearly everything that has made America exceptional grew out of slavery” is demagoguery.

No. Its a critical response a commonly held romanticization of the founding and early history of the US (an incredibly stupid romanticization given the amount of criticism the founders had for each other).

It's also a response to work by a variety of groups to erase the impact and negative stigma around Slavery. To re-romanticize it as heritage and something to be proud of.

I'm also not sure that you're correctly quoting the article (or perhaps it changed, but it currently reads)

> Out of slavery — and the anti-black racism it required — grew nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional: its economic might, its industrial power, its electoral system, its diet and popular music, the inequities of its public health and education, its astonishing penchant for violence, its income inequality, the example it sets for the world as a land of freedom and equality, its slang, its legal system and the endemic racial fears and hatreds that continue to plague it to this day. The seeds of all that were planted long before our official birth date, in 1776, when the men known as our founders formally declared independence from Britain.

I'd be curious to know which of those things you believe didn't grow, in some part or another, out of slavery. And whether the moon landing, silicon valley, or our many nobel laureates weren't in turn influenced/attracted/created by our economic might and industrial power.

> America didn’t rebuild Europe after WWII because of slavery. It didn’t become the most successful immigrant country in the world because of slavery. Silicon Valley, the moon landing, and our raft of Nobel Laureates didn’t grow out of slavery.

Directly? Perhaps not. But are you really going to claim that the immense wealth among white Americans didn't grow out of the subjugation of slaves (and native populations) and theft from those groups? Slavery jumpstarted the US economy, and much of the early US economy (even that of the North) was only successful due to slavery as an institution. That wealth still, today, hasn't really trickled back into the hands of Black Americans.

> America didn’t rebuild Europe after WWII because of slavery.

You're correct in that slavery was not the impetus for rebuilding Europe. But to ignore slavery (and, by the 1940s, the various post-slavery racist policies to subjugate and extract value from Black Americans, whether sharecropping or reconstruction era prison slavery in the south), yes there's a fair argument to be made that much fo the accumulated wealth of the US is due to that wealth not being distributed to slaves in the early years.

Consider the raw numbers: 1/6 of America's population in 1860 was slaves. That means that, as a reasonable guess, 20% of America's workforce wasn't compensated for their work on a national scale, and that was true for decades. Think about what a massive transfer of wealth that would be, compounded over the century and a half since.

> Silicon Valley

This is particularly ironic given Shockley's views on eugenics and race.

> Slavery jumpstarted the US economy, and much of the early US economy (even that of the North) was only successful due to slavery as an institution.

That's a very bold claim to make, especially given that the half of the country that was heavily dependent on slavery lagged far behind, economically.

> That means that, as a reasonable guess, 20% of America's workforce wasn't compensated for their work on a national scale, and that was true for decades. Think about what a massive transfer of wealth that would be, compounded over the century and a half since.

It enriched a relatively small but very wealthy planter class, but there's a very strong argument to be made that it prevented economic development in the South. At the very least, something has to explain why the northern states economically developed so much more rapidly than the South during the first half of the 19th Century, and slavery is a very likely explanation.

> That's a very bold claim to make, especially given that the half of the country that was heavily dependent on slavery lagged far behind, economically.

When you're restricting yourself to first order effects, yes. But do you think that northern states didn't, like, benefit from the southern economy. Eli Whitney was a northerner through and through. Cotton, however, was able to be acquired cheaply due to slave labor.

> It enriched a relatively small but very wealthy planter class, but there's a very strong argument to be made that it prevented economic development in the South. At the very least, something has to explain why the northern states economically developed so much more rapidly than the South during the first half of the 19th Century, and slavery is a very likely explanation.

Yes, the northern recovery was easier because they didn't fall into a local maximum and have their economy entirely depend on slave labor to function. That doesn't mean that the northern/US economy didn't vastly benefit from cheap tobacco (and particularly tobacco exports), cotton (and exports), and sugar production. (The price of cotton went up significantly in the direct postwar period, but went back down eventually due to Sharcropping and increased production in the south, as well as increased competition from Egypt and other nations).

We now, I think, generally recognize the interconnectedness of economies. Pretending that prior to 1865 economies weren't also interconnected seems strange to me.

See: http://bradleyahansen.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-back-of-ed-ba...

There are two separate issues here. First, you need to be careful to avoid double-counting. If cotton sales account for 5% of the economy, you can't go and add to that the money Eli Whitney makes from selling cotton gins to southern plantations. The cost of those cotton gins (rather, the amortized depreciation in the value of those cotton gins) is already baked into the sales price of the cotton. The economy is interconnected, but at the end of the day if the value of exported cotton produced by enslaved people is 5% of the economy, then the whole economy can't be singularly dependent on that industry.

Second, whether the workers on the plantations are paid labor or enslaved people doesn't change the economic calculus for Eli Whitney. He sells cotton gins either way. Back then cotton could be, and was, produced by free labor. When the Civil War disrupted the American cotton industry, free labor in India and Australia and Egypt filled the market gap: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-american-civil-wa....

> The economy is interconnected, but at the end of the day if the value of exported cotton produced by enslaved people is 5% of the economy, then the whole economy can't be singularly dependent on that industry.

I don't think I made such a claim. That said, this claim isn't correct. If the non-exported cotton was a key ingredient in the industries that make up the other 95% of exports (and the non-export economy), the economy would be dependent on that industry. Now I don't think that every aspect of the US economy was dependent on cotton, but textile exports, for example, wouldn't be included as cotton exports, and textiles used at home, wouldn't be either. So this metric does underestimate the economic impact of an industry.

> Second, whether the workers on the plantations are paid labor or enslaved people doesn't change the economic calculus for Eli Whitney. He sells cotton gins either way. Back then cotton could be, and was, produced by free labor. When the Civil War disrupted the American cotton industry, free labor in India and Australia and Egypt filled the market gap:

I agree. This doesn't change the core point: his fortune was built off of slave labor. There exist alternate timelines where it might not have been, but we don't live in those timelines. Trying to tease counterfactuals out of history isn't really good academics. The flow of history is complex enough that smart people can come to contradictory conclusion. Thus, what happened: the US cotton economy was built on the backs of slave labor. Anything else (even conjecture that I agree with, that the US economy would have been stronger sooner with less slavery as it was essentially a local maxima and prevented other forms of innovation) is conjecture.

> If the non-exported cotton was a key ingredient in the industries that make up the other 95% of exports (and the non-export economy), the economy would be dependent on that industry.

Almost all US cotton production was exported, mostly to England. Also remember that at this time, the vast majority of the economy is self-sufficient farmers. My wife’s family wasn’t buying southern cotton out in Oregon. They were living off the land.

Circling back to the Jacobin article, most historians reject the idea that cotton production with slave labor was a big part of the American economy. The contrary claims come from a handful of scholars like Ed Baptist, and as shown in the link above he’s methodology is flawed and rests on double counting.

> Trying to tease counterfactuals out of history isn't really good academics.

You asserted above that immigration into the US and Silicon Valley, for example, can be said to have grown out of slavery because slavery is the source of America’s economic and industrial might. On one hand, the factual premise is false. Slavery was a small part of the economy before it was abolished. And the wealth that drew people to the country was mostly created after slavery was abolished.

Apart from that, you’re invoking a peculiar sort of causation. Someone comes to America as an immigrant and starts a company in 1970, and according to you that “grew out of slavery?” That’s a very “original sin” view of slavery, where the country is forever tainted by the fact slavery existed at one time, regardless of whether there are any traceable benefits to people living today resulting from slavery.

There is a metaphysical sense in which that is true but I don’t think most people would interpret “grew out of” that way. More important, thats not how the 1619 Project authors appear to view the causation either. That’s why they rely on this flawed article claiming that 50% of the US economy was from slavery. Their narrative depends on making slavery seem more economically significant than it was, and making people believe they derive tangible benefits from it today.

> Also remember that at this time, the vast majority of the economy is self-sufficient farmers

By 1850, 40% of the population was employed in non-agriculture, GDP of non-agriculture was higher. Its unclear if this number included slaves as part of the population or not, but either way that suggests that either a minority (though a plurality), or a slim majority at most, was employed in subsistence agriculture style work.

But I want to reiterate that I'm not disagreeing with your conclusion, just with the line of reasoning that 5% of exports implies only a small amount of the economy.

> And the wealth that drew people to the country was mostly created after slavery was abolished.

I'm not sure I see the point here beyond "slavery was a long time ago", and given the historically exponential nature of wealth and economic growth most of it will have been acquired recently. That doesn't mean that perturbations to the initial conditions don't matter, just the opposite: their impacts will be magnified many times over.

I'll reiterate: could America have flourished without slavery? Probably (there's some questions about early America and investment in the new world without slavery, which I think the 1619 project raises, but if you start from 1776, yeah at that point United States could probably have done fine without slavery, and it's a tragedy that the founders didn't make that choice). But the founders didn't make that choice, so we're left with a United States that did have an economy dependent on slavery. And it was dependent enough on slavery that half the states were willing to fight a war over slavery (I mean also the racism and white supremacy, but economic anxiety was at least one component even then).

> That’s a very “original sin” view of slavery, where the country is forever tainted by the fact slavery existed at one time, regardless of whether there are any traceable benefits to people living today resulting from slavery.

But, like, there are. I mean you've admitted as much with things like the wealth gap. A significant portion of the white/black wealth gap in the US can be traced back to slavery (and a lot of the rest of it to racist policies since then, some of which still exist today). That's a tangible benefit.

I'm willing to concede that the 1619 project is perhaps to focused on slavery specifically, and might better be phrased as "the US was founded on white supremacist principles that continue to exist and benefit many of its citizens at the expense of others, even today, with slavery as but one of the most visible," but I get the feeling you'd object to that also.

And those kinds of policies do influence the kinds of people we let immigrate, and who gets VC funding, and who gets hired, and and and.

As for "original sin", I think drawing attention to broken systems is important, especially those systems we hold in extremely high regard. The aura around the US as the city on a hill or whatever that people like to push tries to absolve people of responsibility to fix broken systems, either by pretending that there are no problems now, or that there never were any problems to begin with.

Yeah sure, an immigrant who came here in the 70s didn't contribute to the creation of slavery and the systems that grew out of it, but as long as those systems persist, they'll be the beneficiaries (or victims, depending) of those systems. And yeah, some of those systems run deep in the American ethos.

> might better be phrased as "the US was founded on white supremacist principles that continue to exist and benefit many of its citizens at the expense of others, even today, with slavery as but one of the most visible," but I get the feeling you'd object to that also.

I would certainly object to it, as would most historians, I think.

The principles the US was founded on - that is, the principles that drove the colonies to declare independence from Britain and the unique ideas about government that they incorporated into the state constitutions (and eventually the federal Constitution) were not "white supremacist." Most of the world practiced slavery at the time. The empire they were breaking away from was the #1 slave-trading nation in the world at that time. Slavery was a pre-existing fact when the United States was founded. It wasn't the motivation for the founding.

In fact, at the time, the principles of the revolution were widely regarded as being in conflict with slavery, which is why the United States became one of the first centers of anti-slavery activism in the world. And it's why the northern states became some of the first places in the world to abolish slavery. Even slaveowners in Virginia began questioning slavery at this time. Jefferson, despite his own ownership of slaves, wrote the clause that forbade slavery in the Northwest Territories, and even proposed a new constitution for Virginia that would have freed anyone born after 31 December 1800. This was extremely early, in an international perspective, in the global anti-slavery movement. Britain wouldn't ban slavery until the 1830s.

When later Southern leaders tried to defend slavery, they found the founding principles to be an embarrassing stumbling block. The famous Cornerstone Speech, given by the vice president of the Confederacy, was very self-consciously formulated as a repudiation of the Declaration of Independence, replacing "all men are created equal" with a new supposed "great truth" that people are created unequal. From the "Cornerstone Speech":

> The prevailing ideas entertained by him [Jefferson] and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. [...] Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong.

The fact that the American Revolution did not eliminate slavery does not mean that the principles of the revolution were white supremacist, any more than Athenian democracy's founding principle was mysogeny, because Athens didn't overturn male-dominated society. The American revolution took a society that already had slavery, servitude, etc., and introduced new democratic principles, abolished many forms of servitude, generated opposition to slavery and outlawed slavery in half the new country. Slavery was not something the revolution introduced or ideologically strengthened. Quite the opposite.

Precisely. And you highlight the problem with judging history by current moral standards. That collapses history in on itself and it becomes impossible to even understand what happened.

The cornerstone speech illustrates how the principles embodies in the constitution weren’t just some platitude but were in fact disputed. Other parts of the cornerstone speech are especially illuminating:

> Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science.... Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics.

The Confederacy attacked the founders as zealots and fanatics who didn’t accept the “scientific fact” of inequality of the races. Such thinking would persist well into the 20th century with eugenicists promoting scientific racism. Even today, the idea that everyone is created equal—even as an idea, forget about the implantation—is not universally accepted, especially outside the west.

> Most of the world practiced slavery at the time. The empire they were breaking away from was the #1 slave-trading nation in the world at that time. Slavery was a pre-existing fact when the United States was founded. It wasn't the motivation for the founding.

And "The US was founded on white supremacist principles" can both simultaneously be true.

> Even slaveowners in Virginia began questioning slavery at this time. Jefferson, despite his own ownership of slaves, wrote the clause that forbade slavery in the Northwest Territories, and even proposed a new constitution for Virginia that would have freed anyone born after 31 December 1800. This was extremely early, in an international perspective, in the global anti-slavery movement. Britain wouldn't ban slavery until the 1830s.

Sort of, some antislavery sentiment in the UK predates the revolution. In 1772, slavery was ruled to be prohibited in England under English common law. It was still allowed in British colonies, but calling any founder a "leader" in this regard doesn't hold up to scrutiny. No law needed to be passed banning slavery in England, because it was already illegal prior to the founding of the US. The 1930 law you cite banned slavery in British colonies, but it had already been illegal in England for 60 years, and the slave trade was made illegal in 1807. In other words, in every aspect (partial abolition, total abolition, etc.) the UK led the US.

Article 1, Section 9 of the US constitution likely delayed that British law (the US and UK banned the slave trade simultaneously). Are you really going to tell me that Article 1, Section 9 isn't white supremacist? It literally prohibits the government from banning the slave trade until 1808.

> but calling any founder a "leader" in this regard doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Many were far ahead of the general sentiment of the time on slavery.

> In 1772, slavery was ruled to be prohibited in England under English common law.

The ruling was narrower than that. Strictly speaking, it said that slaves could not be taken from England to the colonies against their will. There were similar "freedom suits" occurring in the colonies at the time. However, the anti-slavery movement on both sides of the Atlantic was small at this time. Slave-owning interests in Britain had far more power in government than the small anti-slavery movement. Their plantations were in the West Indies, which the 1772 ruling had no impact on. In its most expansive possible interpretation (which was not the interpretation that Lord Mansfield, the judge, took), the 1772 ruling affected a relatively small number of slaves in England who worked as domestic servants. It didn't affect the massive plantations in the colonies, many owned by the English aristocracy, where the real economic interest lay.

> In other words, in every aspect (partial abolition, total abolition, etc.) the UK led the US.

This isn't a competition, but to paint Britain as an anti-slavery power at the time of the revolution would be absurd. In the run-up to the revolution, Britain vetoed even limited attempts by American colonies to constrain the slave trade. Virginia, for example, attempted to tax the slave trade out of existence in the early 1770s, only to find its law vetoed by the Crown. In general, the British and American anti-slavery movements were in close contact and fed off one another. The American Revolution, and the wave of anti-slavery acts across the northern states, are generally seen as having strengthened the British anti-slavery movement.

> Article 1, Section 9 of the US constitution likely delayed that British law (the US and UK banned the slave trade simultaneously). Are you really going to tell me that Article 1, Section 9 isn't white supremacist? It literally prohibits the government from banning the slave trade until 1808.

It was a result of a compromise between pro- and anti-slavery forces. It was widely understood that that provision put an expiration date on the slave trade. In other words, it can equally be viewed as an anti-slavery measure, delayed by 20 years in order to appease South Carolina. Long before the federal ban on the slave trade went into effect in 1808, however, every state except for South Carolina banned the trade.

> the northern recovery was easier because they didn't fall into a local maximum and have their economy entirely depend on slave labor to function.

Directly, the Northern economy didn't depend at all on slave labor. It depended on wage labor, supplied in large part by large numbers of immigrants. Almost all immigrants settled in northern states, because there was very little opportunity for them in southern slave-owning society. The jobs and economic growth were almost all in the industrializing North.

The South exported most of its cotton (Britain was the largest importer, I think), so if we're talking about who relied indirectly on slavery, there's a much better argument for Britain being the primary beneficiary than the northern states.

Economies are interconnected, but that's not the core of your claim - the one I object to. The claim that I object to is that slavery is responsible for the US' economic development. From what I've read, it appears much more to have severely stunted economic growth in half the country for decades, while the half that relied on free labor rapidly industrialized.

It appears to me much more that the Southern plantation economy depended heavily on industrial growth in Britain and the northern US, but that British and American textile mills were capable of sourcing their cotton elsewhere if need be (including from economies that used wage labor). The South was much more similar to modern countries that depend entirely on one or a few low-tech exports, such as oil or lumber. Such economies are at the mercy of the international price of their one product. They face tough international competition, because their product isn't particularly complicated, and it's relatively easy to increase production elsewhere in the world. An economy that only exports oil may make a few magnates wealthy, while leaving the economy as a whole stunted and most of the population poor.

> I'd encourage you to ask that question of modern Republican leadership.

Its entirely consistent with what "modern Republican leadership" believes. From Trump's executive order inaugurating the 1776 project: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-or...

> The American founding envisioned a political order in harmony with the design of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” seeing the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as embodied in and sanctioned by natural law and its traditions. The formation of a republic around these principles marked a clear departure from previous forms of government, securing rights through a form of government that derives its legitimate power from the consent of the governed. Throughout its national life, our Republic’s exploration of the full meaning of these principles has led it through the ratification of a Constitution, civil war, the abolition of slavery, Reconstruction, and a series of domestic crises and world conflicts. Those events establish a clear historical record of an exceptional Nation dedicated to the ideas and ideals of its founding.

The founding principles weren't fulfilled in 1776, but the history of the country has been one of progress in that direction. That was conventional wisdom among Democratic political leadership when I was growing up (and I'm only 37) and almost certainly still is the conventional wisdom among most rank-and-file Democrats.

> It's also a response to work by a variety of groups to erase the impact and negative stigma around Slavery. To re-romanticize it as heritage and something to be proud of.

The claim isn't directed to one group's heritage and its contribution. On its face, it is directed at "nearly everything that has truly made American exceptional." It literally ties the entirety of the American story (or nearly all of it) to slavery.

> I'm also not sure that you're correctly quoting the article (or perhaps it changed, but it currently reads)

I copied directly from the post I linked. Its an August 13, 2019 article promoting a kick-off event for the 1619 project.

> I'd be curious to know which of those things you believe didn't grow, in some part or another, out of slavery. And whether the moon landing, silicon valley, or our many nobel laureates weren't in turn influenced/attracted/created by our economic might and industrial power.

Almost none of those things grew out of slavery. Our "legal system" for example was imported wholesale from England--based on principles of the Magna Carta dating back to 1215. Any slave trade into England itself was banned in 1102. Are there imprints on our legal system from slavery? Sure. But its factually incorrect to say our legal system "grew out of slavery."

The notion that our "economic might and industrial power" grew out of slavery is the central economic misconception in the 1619 Project, and I think it's responsible for a lot of the bombastic rhetoric. America is not rich today because of slavery. Jacobin corrected that assertion: https://jacobinmag.com/2019/08/how-slavery-shaped-american-c... ("Desmond begins his article by drawing on the Harvard historian Sven Beckert who argues that 'it was on the back of cotton, and thus on the backs of slaves, that the U.S. economy ascended in the world.' Yet Desmond neglects to mention that this claim has been widely rejected by specialists in the economic history of slavery."). As Jacobin points out, cotton production, the industry where most enslaved people were employed, accounted for 5-10% of the economy.

This is not some right-wing view. Jacobin Magazine is actual socialists/communists. Slavery can make plantation owners rich at the expense of enslaved people. But it can't make an entire country richer than it would have been without the labor of enslaved people. That's contrary to basic economic theory, as well as the economic data we have from the time: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2014/09/ending_slavery.html; http://bradleyahansen.blogspot.com/2018/06/was-slavery-centr....

> But are you really going to claim that the immense wealth among white Americans didn't grow out of the subjugation of slaves

Absolutely. You can't make a country richer by enslaving part of the population, and you don't need slavery to make a country rich. This is obviously true: in the 20th century countries like Japan, Singapore, and South Korea experienced industrialization and economic development just as rapid as what the United States experienced in the 19th century, without slavery. The United States economy, in fact, continued to grew just as fast after the civil war as before it: https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7LfU4Qu52oo/UUolq1OZROI/AAAAAAAAD.... If slavery had been critical to the U.S. economy, you would've expected a massive economic collapse right after the civil war. But there wasn't even a blip.

> Absolutely. You can't make a country richer by enslaving part of the population, and you don't need slavery to make a country rich

Correct, but I didn't claim either of these things. I asked if the immense wealth among white Americans didn't grow out of the subjugation of slaves. Imagine 100 people who are equally wealthy. Now, imagine you take 1/6 of the people, remove all of their wealth, and disperse it among the remaining 5/6. Perhaps you skim a few percent off the top due to inefficiencies of the scheme. Are you saying the 5/6 people here didn't benefit? Sure seems like they did!

> The claim isn't directed to one group's heritage and its contribution. On its face, it is directed at "nearly everything that has truly made American exceptional." It literally ties the entirety of the American story (or nearly all of it) to slavery.

You...you read the full quote, right?

> Almost none of those things grew out of slavery. Our "legal system" for example was imported wholesale from England--based on principles of the Magna Carta dating back to 1215. Any slave trade into England itself was banned in 1102. Are there imprints on our legal system from slavery? Sure. But its factually incorrect to say our legal system "grew out of slavery."

There are a number of uniquenesses to the American legal system that trace themselves to slavery and racism. And I'd argue that many of those things are the things that make the American legal system "exceptional" and unique.

> The founding principles weren't fulfilled in 1776, but the history of the country has been one of progress in that direction. That was conventional wisdom among Democratic political leadership when I was growing up (and I'm only 37) and almost certainly still is the conventional wisdom among most rank-and-file Democrats.

See, I read the opposite from this. "Consent of the governed" is incompatible with slavery. You say that this was simply the principles "not being fulfilled" at the time, but then how can you say that we were founded on a set of values that the constitution then proceeds to explicitly reject? The constitution provides for the 3/5ths compromise, but didn't encode a right to vote (for anyone, that was left up to the individual states) until reconstruction.

> but the history of the country has been one of progress in that direction

This is sort of a meaningless platitude. "Sure you still don't have the rights to life, liberty, and happiness yet, like most people do, but you're closer now than your ancestors were 150 years ago" isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of the US.

> Now, imagine you take 1/6 of the people, remove all of their wealth, and disperse it among the remaining 5/6. Perhaps you skim a few percent off the top due to inefficiencies of the scheme. Are you saying the 5/6 people here didn't benefit? Sure seems like they did!

Slave ownership was strongly concentrated. A relatively small class of plantation owners got rich off slavery. They didn't redistribute the proceeds across the entire white population. Economically, the slave-owning South, as a whole, lagged far behind the North, and slavery is a likely cause for that economic backwardness.

> didn't encode a right to vote (for anyone, that was left up to the individual states) until reconstruction.

That has nothing to do with slavery. The Constitution was written at a time when democracy was viewed with suspicion, and moreover. Nevertheless, the United States was, at the time, rapidly becoming one of the most democratic polities in the world. One way to see this is to look at the state constitutions written in this era.

> That has nothing to do with slavery.

My comment here wasn't about slavery. It was about the claim that america was founded on the principle of government by the consent of the governed.

I think your response proves my point.

> One way to see this is to look at the state constitutions written in this era.

Well, minus the whole slavery thing enshrined in half of them (not to mention landownership requirements that lasted until the civil war in some places, and the net reduction in voting rights in the early 1800s).

Like even at its founding, the US was only marginally better than the UK in terms of enfranchisement. About 2% of Philidelphians were eligible voters. That's the capital of a free state with only a few slaves.

> . A relatively small class of plantation owners got rich off slavery. They didn't redistribute the proceeds across the entire white population. Economically, the slave-owning South, as a whole, lagged far behind the North, and slavery is a likely cause for that economic backwardness.

The south, for the 17th time were not the only people who benefitted. Northern businesses that depended on various plantation based exports also gained.

But even still, I agree that your average white farmer didn't gain a lot, that's true of capitalist economies, not slavery in particular. The gilded age didn't fix wealth inequality.

The bigger question is whether or not the relatively rich and influential southern plantation owners had an outsized impact on, say, the development of universities and such.

> It was about the claim that america was founded on the principle of government by the consent of the governed.

This was absolutely a central principle of the revolution. The objections to taxation by Parliament rested on the colonists' lack of representation in that body.

> Like even at its founding, the US was only marginally better than the UK in terms of enfranchisement. About 2% of Philidelphians were eligible voters.

Perhaps at the founding of the US that was true, but Pennsylvania passed a radically democratic state constitution in 1776 that was highly innovative and unusual in many ways (e.g., a council elected by the people every 7 years to review all laws passed since the last council, with the power to veto any law they considered unconstitutional). The new state constitution granted the right to vote to any man who paid taxes, which by 1787 was nearly 90% of the adult white male population.

> Northern businesses that depended on various plantation based exports also gained.

How did they gain from slavery? They could but cotton from anywhere, and if the South wasn't delivering, they could import it from other countries. The argument works much better in reverse: Southern plantation owners depended critically on the rapidly expanding British and American textile industries. The planters were delivering a relatively low-tech, raw product. The textile mills didn't particularly care how it was produced, and they had multiple sources they could buy it from.

> The gilded age didn't fix wealth inequality.

But it did deliver much more economic development than the old slaveocracy.

> This was absolutely a central principle of the revolution. The objections to taxation by Parliament rested on the colonists' lack of representation in that body.

Right, but the replacement didn't functionally address the broad issue of consent of the governed. It replaced a government of wealthy white gentry with a wealthy white gentry in a different location. Your average American citizen didn't actually gain much, if anything, in terms of representation. Only the upper class did (which is, in many ways, the class we're arguing about).

> Perhaps at the founding of the US that was true, but Pennsylvania passed a radically democratic state constitution in 1776 that was highly innovative and unusual in many ways

And it was practically unique in that regard. The NJ constitution had a wealth requirement and, despite originally granting women and free black people the right to vote, it later rescinded those rights!

Not to mention a Constitution like South Carolinas, which required slave ownership to hold public office.

But more importantly, while the US was busy regressing from the founding principles it only halfheartedly upheld, other nations were busy drafting and creating new constitutions that better uphold those ideals. And tot he point I keep returning to: our deification of the original constitution prevents many necessary improvements in that regard.

> But it did deliver much more economic development than the old slaveocracy.

I don't think I've said otherwise. You seem to think the argument I'm making somehow relies on slavery being a lynchpin of the American economy. It doesn't. It only requires that it have been present.

> Right, but the replacement didn't functionally address the broad issue of consent of the governed. It replaced a government of wealthy white gentry with a wealthy white gentry in a different location. Your average American citizen didn't actually gain much, if anything, in terms of representation.

You're completely wrong about this. You just have to look at the constitutional changes in the states and the huge growth in participation in politics in the 1780s. The revolution was a mass movement, and it had a profound effect on how the general population viewed politics and on what sort of government they were willing to accept.

> And it was practically unique in that regard. The NJ constitution had a wealth requirement and, despite originally granting women and free black people the right to vote, it later rescinded those rights!

Pennsylvania wrote the most democratic state constitution, but it was not at all unique in overhauling its system of government to become much more participatory. New Jersey's 1776 state constitution lowered property requirements, replaced the royal governor with a governor selected by the elected legislature, and reduced his powers (e.g., no veto power), and as you point out, removed racial and gender restrictions to voting.

> But more importantly, while the US was busy regressing from the founding principles it only halfheartedly upheld, other nations were busy drafting and creating new constitutions that better uphold those ideals.

The US was one of the only democratic republics in the world well into the 19th century. That's the context for Lincoln's statement that the United States was "the last best hope of earth." The 1848 revolutions in Continental Europe had been crushed, and the US appeared to many to be the only major democratic country left standing.

> It only requires that it have been present.

If that's the extent of your argument, then your argument is fairly meaningless. Everyone knows that slavery existed in the South. What I and others object to is the claim that the US became wealthy because of slavery. It seems much more likely to me that the US was economically held back by slavery.

> If slavery had been critical to the U.S. economy, you would've expected a massive economic collapse right after the civil war. But there wasn't even a blip.

Do you believe that the newly emancipated slaves retreated to their own self-subsistence farms directly after the civil war or what?

I think you're actually making OP's point: free laborers were capable of doing the same work that unfree laborers had been forced to do.

This isn't my field, but I have read a few papers about the question of how profitable slavery was. Most of the debate seems to be over how profitable it was to the plantation owners, and whether they personally would have made larger profits by investing their money elsewhere (e.g., by hiring wage laborers to work their plantations, or by investing in manufacturing).

The question of slavery's impact on the development of the economy as a whole is completely different from that. Given how backwards the South remained, while the half of the country that abolished slavery surged ahead economically, it's difficult to see how one could argue that slavery caused the US' economic development.

Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about this in Democracy in America. It's well worth reading, to see a contemporary Frenchman's impressions of the stark difference in economic development between the Southern slave and Northern free societies: https://www.tota.world/article/1860/

The point I was trying to make that "free" and "unfree" isn't as binary as some people like to think. The former slaves weren't free from the economic coercion their destitution entailed. Just because you aren't someones literal property anymore doesn't necessarily make you free or in any position to demand a livable wage. The planters were well aware of the disposablity of the wage labourer and even used that it their pro-slavery propaganda that went something like "We actually need to take care of our property, unlike you, who just replace them".

>in some part or another, out of slavery

To put a concise point on it, I think this is something most people agree with. What the project seems to do, however, is change that understanding that slavery contributed to all those problems and instead claims it is the root cause of all of them.

Root cause and proximate causes can relate to the same problem but if we conflate the two we may get a very different understanding of how to fix it. I’m not convinced that every problem highlighted passes the “if not for” test. (E.g., if not for slavery, the US would have universal healthcare).

Side note: I appreciate all the thoughtful responses you’ve taken the time to give in this thread

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