"It is
evident that the Southern country approaches a period of great and sudden
depreciation in the value of slave property."[9]
[Footnote 9: [D.R. Goodloe], _Inquiry into the Causes which have retarded
the Accumulation of Wealth and Increase of Population in the
Southern States, in which the question of slavery is considered in a
politico-economic point of view. By a Carolinian_. (Washington, 1846.)
_See also_ a similar essay by the same author in the U.S. Commissioner of
Agriculture's _Report_ for 1865, pp. 102-135.]
The statistical theme of the South's backwardness was used by many other
essayists in the period for indicting the slaveholding regime. With most
of these, however, exemplified saliently by H.R. Helper, logic was to such
extent replaced with vehemence as to transfer their writings from the
proper purview of economics to that of sectional controversy.
On the other hand, Thomas R. Dew, whose cogent essay of 1832 marks the turn
of the prevailing Southern sentiment toward a firm support of slavery,
attributed the lack of prosperity in the South to the tariff policy of the
United States, while he largely ignored the question of labor efficiency.
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