The high rate of development of capitalism in the United States in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries can be comprehended by considering the role of plantation slavery in the process of production establishment. Slavery and the end of the North-South War directed the impoverishment of the Southern states. In economically underdeveloped, predominantly rural counties, with often hostile whites, freed black men and women without education or capital had to start new lives.
It is crucial to state that slavery was common in the northern borderlands, but the extent of owning people started to diminish as tobacco cultivation became less and less profitable. It was offset by the increasing profitability of slave holdings in the South, where cotton was grown. In 1857, 68% of all cotton coming into English factories arrived from the United States (Olmstead & Rhode, 2018). It caused the belief that if no other reliable supply source had been foreseeable, then slavery in the South was the most promising way to guarantee production.
Demand dynamics moved new settlers and landowners farther south and southwest. Although the value of cotton generally declined in the first half of the nineteenth century, price spikes led to new plantations. The role of enslaved people increased – as early as the 1790s, the number of enslaved Black people nearly doubled (Olmstead & Rhode, 2018). Slavery was not considered an anomaly or a shameful exception but an essential element of early American capitalism that worked for export.
The abolition of slavery became possible and necessary as America’s cotton monopoly met intense competition from India, Egypt, Brazil, and other countries. As a consequence of increased European immigration and intensive exploitation of rich minerals, industrial capitalism expanded rapidly in the United States (Olmstead & Rhode, 2018). The further industrial development of America required the conversion of most of the working population, including enslaved people, into wage laborers and creating a large domestic market. Therefore, the plantation slavery of blacks in the mid-19th century was a significant source of profits for the trading and banking bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, it was an obstacle to the transformation of the United States into a powerful industrial capitalist power.
Reference
Olmstead, A. L., & Rhode, P. W. (2018). Cotton, slavery, and the new history of capitalism. Explorations in Economic History, 67, 1-17.