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280CIVIL WAR HISTORY elsewhere. Slavery cannot be examined as an economic system divorced from its accompanying role as a social system. The lack of mobility of southern capital from agriculture to manufacturing, even in periods of considerable economic distress was due, not to high profits in agriculture, but to cultural and institutional rigidities. Slavery stunted the development of capitaUst rationaUty. The growth of capitalism would have threatened the dominance of the slave-holding aristocracy and therefore could be tolerated only within circumscribed limits. Some of the advanced southern thinkers of the antebellum period, such as William Gregg and Jacob Cardozo in South Carolina (both of whom the editor could have profitably included in the readings) noted that profits in southern manufacturing were often higher than in agriculture; they, in fact, urged the use of excess slaves and poor whites in manufacturing to make the southern economy more viable. The great underutilization of resources of the southern plantation economy , particularly die labor of a poor white class, made it inefficient from the aspect of growth, even though it may have been efficient in terms of the profitabiUty level for some individual holders of slave capital. In this basic sense, American slavery was not an economically viable system. The value of Bruchey's books of readings would have been enhanced, in the opinion of this reviewer, if some attention had been focused on the political economy of slavery. As it stands, the book is still worthy of close reading by students of tiie antebellum period. Melvin M. Leiman SUNY, Binghamton The National Waterway: A History of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, 1769-1965. By Robert D. Gray. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967. Pp. xL 279. $8.95.) The Chesapeake and Delaware Canal may well be the most important canal per mile ever dug in the United States. Less than fourteen miles were needed to connect Chesapeake Bay and the Delaware River, thus avoiding the open ocean and saving some tiiree hundred miles of water between Philadelphia and Baltimore. Philadelphia had the greatest original interest because of its desire to draw the business of the Susquehanna Valley, while Baltimore was much less enthusiastic. As other routes to the West were opened Philadelphia enthusiasm declined and that of Baltimore increased. The obvious value of the canal was recognized as early as the seventeenth century, and serious efforts came from the 1760's. The effective canal company was not chartered until after 1800, and then experienced great troubles. One deterring factor was the War of 1812, but the main problem was money, with a great and eventually successful drive to get aid from the federal government. When the canal was opened in 1829 it had cost a trifle over two milb'on dollars, which was something over 82 per cent more than the original estimate. This amount seems today relatively small, book reviews281 but the troubles of the originators become apparent with the realization that no dividends were possible until 1854; if the originators hoped to make their fortunes they did not show good judgment. The original lock canal carried its greatest tonnage in 1872. The canal was purchased by the federal government in 1919, enlarged, and the locks eu'minated. It is still in use. The canal was particularly important during the early stages of the Civil War, and not only because of its economic functions. The pro-Southern sympathy of Baltimore inspired mobs that practically stopped railroad traffic between the North and Washington, and particularly troop movements . For a time it seemed that Washington might be isolated from the North. The answer was to use steamboats which passed through the canal and then down the Chesapeake to Annapohs, where a railroad was available to Washington, thus bypassing Baltimore. Professor Gray has searched diUgently for his material, and presents it clearly and with good organization. The one obvious hazard for the reader is the large amount of minute detail. One sympathizes with Professor Gray's reluctance to omit material which he worked so hard to collect, but the reader should be warned that this is not a book for light summer reading. On the other hand, no later researcher will need to work...

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