Time on the Cross by Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman

As I understand it, this book created a bit of a firestorm when it came out (over three decades ago), as it's a work of major historical revisionism on slavery. Writing anything about slavery invites controversy, of course, but in this book, the authors took aim at a few very common beliefs about slavery. Specifically (among other things), they argued:

1) Slaves were not treated nearly as horribly as is commonly believed. (Don't get me wrong, the authors are very clear on the fact that slavery was deeply immoral.) They were well-fed, received comparatively good health care (for the time), and were not physically abused as much as is typically portrayed. They offer more than an appeal to common sense (a slave owner needs the slaves in good condition for work), but go through all sorts of studies of calorie production and consumption and health records and such of the time. Moreover, they contrast these data to life for black Americans after slavery ended, which was very, very harsh for most, as institutional racism proved an arguably harsher barrier than slavery for decades and decades.

2) Slaves were quite productive, skilled, and industrious. The authors offer plenty of data showing that the slaves were more productive than free labor (and in general were more highly compensated). There were also a great many skilled slaves. The authors even go to great detail to show that slave women were very attentive mothers (again, in contrast to the beliefs of many historians and people of the time), citing infant mortality rates and comparing these to similar rates of other groups. Basically, the book goes to some lengths to portray the falsehood of many of the prevailing, essentially racist, views about the morality and ability of blacks.

3) Slavery was an effective economic system for the Southern states, and was not on its way out. This might have been where the book was at its strongest -- showing how the economics of slavery shaped the institution and convincingly countering the common argument that slavery was on its heels and would have vanished from the South before much longer. Not only the data, but simple economic sense supports the authors on this. Indeed, many of the arguments in these areas could be used as Econ 101 lessons -- the slaveholders pursue their self-interest, and, predictably, here's what happens. For example, the authors contrast the South with much of the rest of the Americas. In the latter, the key crop was sugar, which was much more labor-intensive than cotton. Slave populations were much higher and living conditions were much harsher (much more disease in the tropics, for one). One simple economic result: Southern slaveholders encouraged childbirth, sugar slaverholders discouraged it (brutally at times), since in the South, slaves were likely to live long enough to make up for the investment of supporting them in childhood, but the opposite was true in the tropics. (The authors also cite plenty of evidence that the slaveholders weren't just acting as breeders -- there wasn't much turnover in slaves outside of bankruptcy and estate sales.)

Of course, I didn't go back to the authors' primary sources to check their data, and it may well be that records from the time can be made to sing all sorts of different tunes. But I did find the find the book interesting, and it does dovetail with my earlier arguments about looking at subjects empirically (study the data of the time to make conclusions about slavery) rather than trying to strictly reason from first principles (mainly, pre-conceived notions about slaveholders and slaves -- the authors offer several examples of these prejudices coloring the views of historians who take a less statistically rigorous approach to the subject).

I imagine all sorts of papers and probably more than a few books have been written to counter Fogel and Engerman -- I'll have to hunt these down to see how effectively (if at all) they do so. But one book on this subject is enough for me for now...