, Columnist
How Slavery Hurt the U.S. Economy
Slave labor prevented American capitalism from becoming more efficient more quickly.
Hampton, Virginia, August 2019.
Photographer: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFPThis article is for subscribers only.
The 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first African slaves in what was to become America has reopened an old debate: How important was slavery to the rise of the U.S. as an economic power?
One school of thought argues that slavery in general, and cotton in particular, was the driving force behind the development of America’s distinctive brand of capitalism. (The New York Times’s ambitious 1619 Project contains a good encapsulation of this argument.) But not only has this theory come under fire for inaccuracies, its central narrative is incorrect.