institution which would die out naturally or be easy to abolish. Madison `spoke often and
anxiously of slave property as the worst possible for profit.' He used to say that Richard Rush's
10-acre free farm near Philadelphia brought in more money than his own 2,000-acre one worked
by slaves. And it is true that in Russia serfdom, the form of slavery practiced there, was
economically outmoded and slowly dying. But in America Madison's views were out of date by
- It is a horrible fact that modern economics and high technology do not always work in
favor of justice and freedom. Thanks to slavery, a cotton plantation could be laid out and in full
production in two years. It was possible to harvest a crop even in one year, anda man who stood in a wilderness fewer than 12 months ago now stood at a dock watching his crop load out for the English factory towns.' The frontiersman thus became part of a commercial economy andcotton
made it possible for a man to hang a crystal chandelier in his frontier log cabin.' Early in 1823 a
man in western Georgia planted cleared land with cotton, sold it in May with the crop
established, cleared land in Alabama that autumn, planted and sold the farm, and then repeated
the process in Mississippi; he ended up with 1,000 good acres freehold, which had cost him
$1,250 and two years' work. But of course this rapidity would have been impossible without
slavery, which made it easy to carry your workforce with you and switch it at will. Slaves made
fortunes for those who owned and skillfully exploited them. There were thousands of small
planters as well as big ones. A few plantations were worked by the white families which owned
them. But over 90 percent had slaves. By the early 1820s a new kind of large-scale specialist
cotton plantation, worked by hundreds of slaves, began to dominate the trade.
The big plantations were in turn supplied by specialist, highly commercial slave-breeding
plantations. With monogamous marriages, only 10-15 percent of female slaves produced a child
a year. Plantations which sold slaves for the market insured regular provision of sires for all
nubile females, so that up to 40 percent of female slaves produced a child each year. The notion
that Southern slavery was an old-fashioned institution, a hangover from the past, was false. It
was a product of the Industrial Revolution, high technology, and the commercial spirit catering
for mass markets of hundreds of millions worldwide. It was very much part of the new modern
world. That is why it proved so difficult to eradicate. The value of the slaves themselves formed
up to 35 percent of the entire capital of the South. By mid-century their value was over $2 billion
in gold; that was one reason compensation was ruled out-it would have amounted to at least ten
times the entire federal budget.
With so much money invested in slavery it was not surprising that the South ceased to
apologize for slavery and began to defend it. This was a slow process to begin with. In 1816
James Monroe (1758-1831), Madison's right-hand man, succeeded him as president after an easy
election. He was the last of the great Virginia dynasty and he shared with his predecessors the
anomaly that he owned slaves all his life but wanted to abolish slavery. He had been born in the
famous Westmoreland County, attended William and Mary, served in the Revolutionary War,
studied law with Jefferson, served with the Virginia legislature and the Continental Congress,
had been senator, envoy in France, governor of Virginia, had negotiated the Louisiana Purchase,
and then done eight years as secretary of state. As president he was surprisingly popular, if only
because he was a change from the unsuccessful Madison, and he was reelected in 182o almost
unanimously. Monroe was a dull man, very conservative in most things, the last President to
wear a powdered wig, knee-breeches, and cocked hat, soft-spoken, well-mannered, prudish, and
careful. Jefferson said that, if turned inside out, he would be found spotless.
Monroe is known to history chiefly as the author of the Monroe Doctrine (1823), of which
more later. He ought to be better known for his promotion of the scheme to solve the slavery