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Economy III: How much did slavery fuel the US economy?

Tue, Sep 13

Learning Goals - By the end of this session you will:

  1. Understand slavery as an absent presence (and sometimes a present presence) in economic thought since ancient Greece
  2. Understand when and how ideas of a "national economy" came into being and how this compares with other definitions of economy we considered
  3. By drawing upon enslaved people's narratives as negative examples, generate a list of basic "economic rights." Reflect upon whether or where barriers to those rights that still exist today (in US or internationally)
  4. Articulate ways in which the contemporary impact of slavery on certain populations emerges with respect to the question, "Who is (gets to be an) economic agent?"

Read This:

Access these readings on our course's Perusall page:

  1. "Slavery and the U.S. Economy," a document that includes selections from:
    1. Frances E. W. Harper, "Liberty for Slaves" (1857) (a speech)
    2. Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) (an autobiography)
    3. P.R. Lockhart, "How slavery became America’s first big business" (2019) (interview with historian Edward Bishop)
    4. Trevon Logan, "Slavery was never an American economic engine" (2022) (article)

Watch This:

In the first rap battle in Lin Manuel Miranda's musical Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton calls out Thomas Jefferson and James Madison for romanticizing the financial situation of the South without factoring enslaved people's labor into their accounting.