To engage with the larger literature on the economic consequences of slavery, we use antebellum census data to examine demographic differences at the frontier for free slaves in 1860. We find evidence of low population density, less intensive land use, and lower farm prices on the slave side. Part of the border region was underutilized. This does not support the view that abolition was a costly deterrent to landowners. Indeed, the low demand for the same, yet cheap, land presents a different puzzle: why didn’t yeomen farmers cross the border to fill the vacant land in the slave states, as was the case in the free states of the old Northwest? At this point, we find evidence of higher wages on the side of slaves, which shows the aversion of free labor to working in a slave society. This evidence of systematically lower economic performance in slaveholding areas suggests that earlier accounts of plantation profits were misplaced, or at least incomplete.
That’s according to a new NBER working paper by Hoyt Bleakley and Paul Rhode.
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