Deck 10: The Debate over Slavery

Question 1

Which of the following was NOT a major claim of Fogel and Engerman (1974)in their work on slavery?

A) Slavery was profitable for Southerners.
B) Slavery slowed the mechanization of the plantations.
C) Slaves were treated fairly well.
D) Slavery was efficient.

Answer 1

Slavery slowed the mechanization of the plantations.

Question 2

Fogel and Engerman (1974)are generally of the opinion that American slavery

A) was antiquated, inefficient and was on the verge of existance.
B) was thriving and profitable in the decades prior to the Civil War.
C) provided conditions for a reasonably normal family life and standard of living for ?the slaves with very little breakup of slave families or exploitation of slaves.
D) was inferior to the wage-labor system in the South and would have likely been ?replaced with time.

Answer 2

was thriving and profitable in the decades prior to the Civil War.

Question 3

Southern slave owners were not rational people and did not strive to maximize profits through the ?use of the slave system of production.

Answer 3

False

Question 4

Most surveyed economists support Fogel and Engerman's (1974)position that plantation owners were largely rational and treated slaves in their best profit interest.

Question 5

Between 1790 and 1860,Southern population growth was dominated by growth in the slave population.

Question 6

The South was characterized by all of the following except

A) large plantations and slave labor.
B) a more unequal distribution of income and wealth than in the North.
C) a lack of public education systems.
D) a strong manufacturing sector.

Question 7

On the eve of the Civil War,cotton was the major crop in the Old South.

Question 8

A fundamental criticism of Time on the Cross is that economics cannot be used to simply compare the welfare of the slaves to their free,white counterparts.

Question 9

Contrary to Fogel and Engerman's (1974)claim,most surveyed economists believed that slavery ?was on the verge of extinction on the eve of the Civil War.

Question 10

Slaver owners were optimistic about the economic future of slavery on the eve of the Civil War.

Question 11

There is evidence to suggest that slaves were commonly sold and families were often separated.

Question 12

Why did the slave-labor system probably cause a lag in Southern urban and industrial development?

A) The slave system provided a weak market for goods because of the low income and consumption levels of slaves.
B) Side-effects of urbanization and industrialization, such as slave flight and greater freedom, were threatening to Southern owners.
C) The South's slave society culture was resistant to manufacturing and urbanization.
D) All of the above apply.

Question 13

Fogel and Engerman (1974)find evidence to suggest that young slave children were often sold by profit-maximizing slave owners.

Question 14

From an ethical standpoint,the plantation owners of the South typically saw the system of slavery as

A) basically superior to the wage-labor system of the North.
B) basically inferior to the wage-labor system and only likely to exist temporarily.
C) basically equal to the wage-labor system but more profitable.
D) not needing a moral justification because slavery had been accepted without ?question throughout most of human history.

Question 15

Stampp (1976)finds evidence to suggest that the Southern slave owners were operating at losses,?not profits.

Question 16

Slaves had incentives to remain docile,not resist their work demands and continue to depend on slavery as an institution according to Elkins (1959).

Question 17

The demand for slaves was increasing more rapidly in cities than on plantations.

Question 18

A strong majority of economists support the proposition that the material,not psychological,conditions of the slaves compared favorably with those conditions faced by industrial workers ?before the Civil War.

Question 19

Fogel and Engerman (1974)argue that slavery was economically viable until 1860.

Question 20

Rational slave owners had economic incentive to adequately clothe,feed and care for their slaves.

Question 21

All of the following were true in the South except

A) Slaves had little or no status in courts of law.
B) Slave marriages (when there was a ceremony) were not legal, binding contracts.
C) Slaves' property was legally their own.
D) Slaves' own children were not theirs to control; slaves were property.

Question 22

Compare and contrast indentured servitude and slavery as solutions to the colonial and antebellum labor problems from the perspective of the entrepreneur (i.e.,the merchant,farmer,plantation owner).

Question 23

If the relative market price of producing cotton is more than the opportunity cost of producing it in the South,

A) the market price of cotton will fall in the long run.
B) producers will increase the supply of cotton in the long run.
C) resources will flow away from the production of cotton, causing the supply of it to decline with the passage of time.
D) the situation will remain unchanged as long as supply and demand remain in balance.

Question 24

Which of the following was not claimed in the book Time on the Cross,by Fogel and ?Engerman (1974)?

A) Slavery was growing stronger economically before the Civil War.
B) Slave agriculture in the South was more productive than was family farming in the North.
C) Slave breeding and sexual exploitation by slave owners were normal aspects of the slave system.
D) Slave field hands were harder working and more efficient than were white agricultural workers.

Question 25

Compare and contrast the different theories explaining why slavery persisted until the Civil War.

Question 26

White indentured servitude disappeared in the decades following the American Revolution and the founding of the nation.However,black slavery continued and expanded.What accounts for the differing fates of these two systems of labor inherited from colonial America?

Question 27

Conrad and Meyer (1958)counter Fogel and Engerman's (1974)claim that slave breeding was a myth by arguing that any profit-maximizing slave owner would consider slave breeding as long as:

A) The expected rate of return from slave sales fell below the costs of rearing the slave to the age of sale.
B) Slavery was an irrational institution.
C) The expected rate of return from slave sales exceeded the costs of rearing the slave to the age ?of sale.
D) Slavery was an immoral institution.

Question 28

Which researcher argues that the slave system and its enforcement mechanisms prevented slave individualism from emerging within the system itself?

A) Robert Fogel
B) Stanley Engerman
C) Stanley Elkins
D) Kenneth Stampp

Question 29

What did Steckel (1986)find when he compared the slave population to today's white population?

A) The mortality rates of the slaves were much higher than those of modern whites.
B) Prenatal and postnatal care was the same.
C) The number of pregnancies brought to term in each group was about the same.
D) All of the above.

Question 30

"One of the important requisites for economic development is a free labor force in order to make ?free transfers of labor possible.A production organization cannot be very flexible if it has to engage in the purchase or sale of slaves every time it changes its output." To what extent did the South's ?pre-1860 economic history confirm or refute the foregoing generaliza?tions?

Question 31

Land inheritance in the Southern colonies differed from inheritance in the Middle and New England colonies in that

A) primogeniture was more typical in the South.
B) economies of large scale production were more important outside the South, which discouraged the formation of large plantations.
C) ownership of land was permitted by slaves outside the South but not in the South.
D) none of the above; there were no major differences in inheritance between the Southern colonies and the Middle and New England colonies.

Question 32

Conrad and Meyer (1958)found evidence to support the claim that the annual rates of return to slave agriculture were

A) high enough to attract investment funds away from other alternatives in the cotton South.
B) high enough to benefit the entire Southern economy through the profits generated and the backward and forward links to other businesses.
C) relatively low in the new frontier, thus encouraging the new cotton producing areas of the South to move away from the slave system.
D) low enough that the people in the North could purchase the slaves and free them at minimal cost.

Question 33

Slaves were expensive factors of production in comparison to free labor.Which of the following ?was not a cost to slave labor?

A) Food
B) Clothing
C) Wages
D) Medical care

Question 34

Suppose the Constitutional Convention of 1787 had abolished slavery.How would this have affected the economy of the American South?

Question 35

Historians typically disagree with which of the following contentions from Time on the Cross?

A) Slavery was profitable for Southerners and consequently resulted in wealth accumulation.
B) Slavery was on the verge of extinction on the eve of the Civil War.
C) Slave owners were moral and treated slaves with kindness and high standards.
D) Slave breeding and sexual exploitation were myths and slave sales rarely broke up slave families.

Question 36

Which of the following is an economic argument used to explain why slavery persisted in the U.S.?

A) Slavery crushed out individualism among slaves.
B) The social structure of slavery did not permit black leaders to lead revolts.
C) Slavery was an overall moral institution.
D) Slavery was a rational institution.

Question 37

The careful historian,in studying an institution like slavery and in striving for objectivity,will give special attention to all of the following except

A) Those processes which recur over time and which continually motivated the institution
B) A theory which provides understanding of the cause-and-effect relationships involved
C) The background conditions of the period
D) All of the above statements must be given special attention

Question 38

Which of the following would empirically support the claim that slave owners were optimistic about the future of the slave system in the 1850s?

A) Rising slave prices
B) An increasing demand for slaves
C) A positive net return to slave purchases
D) All of the above

Question 39

The reminiscences of two famous people who were born into slavery,Frederick Douglass and ?Booker T.Washington,include all of the following except

A) The common custom among slave owners was to ensure that small children of slaves ?had the nurturing of both parents until they reached good working age.
B) Their early years were not very different from thousands of other slave children.
C) Their fathers were white men.
D) They saw their mothers infrequently, only a few times in their lives, or only sometimes ?in the early morning hours before their mothers went to work or late at night.

Question 40

Time on the Cross views slavery as a system in which

A) the slaves were quite happy, good-hearted and content with their condition.
B) the plantations were efficient operations with incentive systems providing slaves with some rewards for productive behaviors.
C) the slaves, because of the oppression and brutal conditions they faced, had the same type of attitudes as did the inmates of Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
D) the prospects of escape or resistance were so poor that slaves made few revolts against slavery.

Question 41

Explain why the Civil War did not end the debate over slavery.Describe how that debate still affects us today.

Question 42

Consider the institution of slavery using economic reasoning.How is the market price of a slave determined? What determines whether slaves will continue to be supplied in a competitive market? What determines whether slaves will continue to be demanded in a competitive market? Explain ?why slavery continues to exist today in various forms.Discuss the limitations of using economic reasoning to study an institution like slavery.

Question 43

The cotton sector grew and contributed greatly to the overall performance of the Southern economy.However,the distribution of wealth increasingly favored a small minority of large plantation owners.Explain how this change in the distribution of wealth helped fuel resistance against slavery.

Question 44

Can economic historians make definitive statements about the quality of slave life and effectively compare it to the quality of life outside the slave system? Why or why not? Use the work of economic historians to support your answers.