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Comment by linearrust | Hacker News Reader

> Alexis de Tocqueville noted in the 1840s that slave-holding America was much poorer than non-slave-holding America

That's because the north, in particular new england, started industrializing in the late 1700s. While the south, due to a variety reasons, didn't.

> Slavery absolutely did not benefit the masters

If it didn't, the civil war wouldn't have happened. The wealthy elite who owned slaves benefited immensely. Just visit a plantation turned historical museum in the south. Most southerners didn't own slaves.

> "I'm better than you" is a human instinct that continues unabated to this day -- many absolutely adore that feeling as if it was a mind-altering drug hit.

Indeed.

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Yup. It's important to note that while slavery was bad economically for the South as a whole, it was certainly good for the tiny minority of rich white elite.

Interestingly enough, a virulent white supremacist at the time [1] pointed this out, and the South banned his book. He hated black people, but at the same time made the economic analysis that slavery was a tool for white elite to oppress not just black people but also poor white people. He wanted to end slavery not to benefit blacks (he wanted to build a railroad to send black people to South America), but to benefit poorer whites.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinton_Rowan_Helper

Fortunately, we learned from this lesson, and we'll never let elites bring in tons of outsiders to push down the price of local labor, to the detriment of everyone but themselves.

> He wanted to end slavery not to benefit blacks (he wanted to build a railroad to send black people to South America), but to benefit poorer whites.

Interesting. Abraham Lincoln also wanted to expel blacks. Lincoln was a member of the American Colonization Society which aimed to send blacks (free or enslaved ) to africa. Also, lincoln was a virulent white supremacist as well. But for some strange reason history doesn't like to dwell on that inconvenient truth.

I had never heard of him. Thanks for the pointer!

> That's because the north, in particular new england, started industrializing in the late 1700s. While the south, due to a variety reasons, didn't.

Among those reasons was this: that slavery made the capitalists in the South lazy.

> > Slavery absolutely did not benefit the masters

> If it didn't, the civil war wouldn't have happened. The wealthy elite who owned slaves benefited immensely. Just visit a plantation turned historical museum in the south. Most southerners didn't own slaves.

It's a matter of perception: the masters didn't perceive that industrializing would have benefited them much more than slavery ever could, nor did they perceive that slavery held them back. So of course they saw abolition as a threat to their status.

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