Research Seminar: Tell Me What You Grow and I'll Tell You What You Think: Westward Expansion and the Politics of Slavery in the US South

• Wed 28, 2020 @ 14:00. Webinar!!!  Moved to 14:00!!
• Speaker:  Michele Rosenberg (Northwestern)
• Title: Tell Me What You Grow and I'll Tell You What You Think: Westward Expansion and the Politics of Slavery in the US South (with Federico Masera, U New South Wales)
• Invited by: C. Rodríguez  (ICAE-UCM)

Abstract: Slavery had long been one of the dominant labor institutions before its demise in the nineteenthcentury. This paper shows that changing economic interests determined shifts in political sup-port for slavery. We exploit the competitive forces generated by the westward territorial expan-sion of the Southern Unites States between 1810 and 1860 to identify changes in local economicincentives for the use of slave labor. We show that areas losing their comparative advantage inthe production of cotton with respect to wheat changed their production decisions, reduced theiruse of slave labor, and decreased political support for slavery. Using information on presiden-tial and gubernatorial elections, Congressional representatives’ roll-call behavior, newspapers’slavery-related content, and free black population, our results show that the Westward Expan-sion divided the South’s productive, political, and social system in the decades leading to theCivil War.

Keywords: Slavery, Institutional Change, Political Economy, Westward ExpansionJEL 

Codes: N31, O13, O17, P48

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