Nor is it possible to prevent them. Severity
increases the evil, and humanity does not lessen it."
[Footnote 92: Francis Corbin to James Madison, Oct. 10, 1819, in the
Massachusetts Historical Society _Proceedings_, XLIII, 263.]
On the whole, the question whether negro labor in slavery was more or less
productive than free negro labor would have been is not the crux of the
matter. The influence of the slaveholding regime upon the whites themselves
made it inevitable that the South should accumulate real wealth more slowly
than the contemporary North. The planters and their neighbors were in the
grip of circumstance. The higher the price of slaves the greater was the
absorption of capital in their purchase, the blacker grew the black belts,
the more intense was the concentration of wealth and talent in plantation
industry, the more complete was the crystallization of industrial society.
Were there any remedies available? Certain politicians masquerading as
economists advocated the territorial expansion of the regime as a means
of relief. Their argument, however, would not stand analysis. On one hand
virtually all the territory on the continent climatically available for the
staples was by the middle of the nineteenth century already incorporated
into slaveholding states; on the other hand, had new areas been available
the chief effects of their exploitation would have been to heighten the
prices of slaves and lower the prices of crops.
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