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Civil War began, some ardent defenders of slavery -- like George FitzHugh, author of the notorious 1857 polemic Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters -- argued that the abolition of slavery would result in something worse: the spread of the industrial-style market capitalism of the North. We do not have to agree with FitzHugh's belief that this industrialization would be worse than slavery in order to realize that, in many important ways, he made an accurate prediction. In this paper, I will argue that the industrialization of "Gilded Age" America in the latter nineteenth century should be understood as filling the economic gaps left by abolition -- which resulted not only in new prosperity, but also in new violations of human rights.
OUTLINE
This paper will argue that American industrialization after the U.S. Civil War filled the gap left by the abolition of slavery, essentially replacing it with "wage slavery." Defenders of slavery before the Civil War, such as George FitzHugh, had warned that this would be the consequence of abolition -- the worst aspects of the industrialized North would take over all of America. This paper argues that industrialization was merely a response to the abolition of slavery and the declaration of a new economic regime in America: the replacement of slavery by industrialization is a natural economic consequence (like the replacement of trains by cars or...
r land-lines by iPhones).
This paper will advance this basic thesis that late 19th century American industrialization essentially replaced the system of slavery by considering industrialization in three major aspects:
(1.) Its effect on the economy, which underwent rapid growth in the later 19th century but also became more unequal, dangerously volatile and susceptible to panics
(2.) Its effect on the lives of citizens, where newly freed blacks would experience a system that the historian David Oshinsky calls "worse than slavery" because (in his words) "emancipation had ended slavery but had not destroyed the assumptions upon which slavery was based" (Oshinsky 18)
(3.) Finally its effect on the political system, which became a one-party oligarchy susceptible to immense corruption from Credit Mobilier to Teapot Dome -- until the point where, according to historian Richard Hofstadter, "the Senate [was] so filled with business magnates that it was popularly called 'the Millionaires' Club'" (Hofstadter 218)
Additionally the paper will advance the argument that industralization replaced slavery (economically but also to some extent ethically) by examining five specific groups that were affected by…
Works Cited
FitzHugh, George. Cannibals All! or Slaves Without Masters. Richmond: Morris, 1857. Web. Accessed 15 Jan 2016 at: http://books.google.com/books?id=ECdb7EjiBnEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=cannibals+all&cd=2#v=onepage&q=worse%20than%20slavery&f=false
Hofstadter, Richard. The American Political Tradition. New York: Vintage, 1989. Print.
Oshinsky, David. Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice. New York: Free Press, 1997. Print.
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