"A State of Commerce": Market Power and Slave Power in Abolitionist Political Economy

"A State of Commerce": Market Power and Slave Power in Abolitionist Political Economy Daniel J. Mclnerney On September 21, 1849, ^ev· Daniel Foster addressed the people in his home community of Danvers, Massachusetts, on the subject of slavery. In his opening remarks, Foster emphasized the momentous choice facing his listeners, pointing to the particular evil that the chattel system represented: We exert an inevitable and most important influence in the decision of the one transcendent question, on the right and speedy settlement of which depends, more or less intimately, the well-being of all men. That question is, "Shall slavery be extended and perpetuated in our land, giving over society to the desolation of unrestrained selfishness0."' Foster's concern may appear unusual or even misplaced to modern eyes. Out of the many conceivable dangers posed by the chattel system, one might imagine that the problem of selfishness would not hold a position of such urgency and importance. Yet Foster merely echoed a frequently-stated fear among reformers about slavery. His remarks, and those of fellow advocates, point to a critical—if initially puzzling— component of the abolition argument. The warnings that Foster and others raised over the chattel system's selfish force were part of a larger set of assumptions reformers held about the political economy of slavery. In their critical examinations of the slave system, advocates of reform often directed attention to matters of labor and class relations and reflected on questions of utilitarianism and liberal commitments. But Foster's comments suggest one other 1 Daniel Foster, An Address on Slavery, Delivered in Danvers, Mass. (Boston: BeIa Marsh, 1849), 7. Though Foster referred to the "extension" of slavery in this part of the speech, he went on to urge "the immediate overthrow of American Slavery" (9 [italics added in both quotesl). Civil War History, Vol. XXXVIl, No. 2, ® 1991 by the Kent State University Press 102CIVIL WAR HISTORY important subject of political economy, a theme prominent in reform appeals though relatively neglected in recent scholarship: the interconnections between the economics of slavery and questions of ethics and politics.2 In discussions that tended to be long on agitation and short on systematic rigor, abolitionists traced the links between slavery's material base and the wider society. Although the empirical validity of reform claims remains open to question, the language, imagery, and assumptions of the abolition argument pointed in a clear direction: advocates maintained that their opponents were not only masters of slaves but also masters of the market. Reformers portrayed the slavepower as a body that dominated economic relations, internalized the mercenary standards of the marketplace, and sought to institutionalize those codes throughout the nation. The enemy, in other words, hoped to subordinate the polity and society completely to the principles of economic transaction, conducting life according to the ledger book rather than the Good Book. The abolitionists' response to this question of political economy offered them an understanding of how the chattel system had advanced, and at what cost to republican liberty the slavepower had succeeded in its ambitions. The reformers' concern with the interrelations of economics, ethics, and politics grew not only from established traditions of political economy ,3 but also from the informing ideas of the abolition movement itself. 2 For general discussions of abolitionist political economy, see: Ronald G. Walters, The Antislavery Appeal: American Abolitionism after 1830 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1976), ch. 7; and Allen Kaufman, Capitalism, Slavery, and Republican Values: Antebellum Political Economists, 1819-1848 (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1982). On the subject of class relations, see: Aileen S. Kraditor, Means and Ends in American Abolitionism : Garrison and His Critics on Strategy and Tactics, 1834-1850 (New York: Pantheon, 1967), 242-55; and James Brewer Stewart, Wendell Phillips: Liberty's Hero (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1986), ch. 6. On questions of labor, see: Eric Foner, "Abolitionism and the Labor Movement in Antebellum America," in Anti-Slavery, Religion, and Reform: Essays in Memory ofRoger Anstey, eds. Christine Bolt and Seymour Drescher (Folkestone, Kent: Dawson, 1980), 254-71; Jonathan A. Glickstein, '"Poverty is not Slavery': American Abolitionists and the Competitive Labor Market," in Antislavery Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Abolitionists, eds...