The Abolition of Slavery and the End of International War

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The Abolition of Slavery and the End of International War
Author(s): James Lee Ray
Source: International Organization, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Summer, 1989), pp. 405-439
Published by: The MIT Press
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The abolition of slavery and the end of
international war James Lee Ray
In A Study of War,Q uincy Wrighto bserves that "war ... is found in nearly
all existing groups, however primitive."'IT he origins of slavery may well
have involved a combinationo f warfarea nd economic incentives, as noted
by Will Durant: "The rise of agriculture . . . led to the employment of the
socially weak by the socially strong; not till then did it occur to the victor
in war that the only good prisoner is a live one. Butchery and cannibalism
lessened, slavery grew.... Warh elped to make slavery, and slavery helped
to make war."2
In additiont o this hypothesized connection between their origins, slavery
and war have also shared an assumed common base in "human nature."
That is, for thousands of years even many of those with the best minds
assumed that war and slavery were naturala nd thereforei nevitable. In this
view, accordingt o KennethW altz, "Ourm iseriesa re ineluctablyt he product
of our natures. The root of all evil is man, and thus he is himself the root
of the specific evil, war. This estimate of cause . . . has been immensely
influential.I t is the conviction of St. Augustine and Luther, of Malthusa nd
An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the International
Studies Association, St. Louis, 29 Marcht o 2 April 1988. EimadH oury, Allen Joseph, Mihali
Krassacopoulos,P atriciaM orris,a nd Mi Yung Yoon made helpfulc ommentso n that version.
I am especially gratefulf or the criticismsa nd suggestionso f GilbertA bcarian,D ale L. Smith,
Stephen D. Krasner,a nd anonymousr eviewers for InternationalO rganization.
1. Quincy Wright,A Study of War, 2d ed. (Chicago:U niversityo f ChicagoP ress, 1965),p .
36.
2. Will Durant,O ur OrientalH eritage (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1951),p . 20. See also
L. T. Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution,4 th ed. (London:C hapman& Hall, 1923),p . 272. "Two
conditions," asserts Hobhouse, "suffice to insure the growth of slavery ... in the savage
world. The first conditioni s a certaind evelopmento f industrialization."(B y this he means, it
is obvious from the context, agriculture.)" In a huntingt ribe, which lives from handt o mouth,
there is little occasion for the services of a slave." Hobhouse then explains that the second
condition is "warlike prowess," thus also pointingt o war as the interveningv ariable, so to
speak, between the rise of agriculturea nd the appearanceo f slavery.
International Organization 43, 3, Summer 1989
?) 1989b y the WorldP eace Foundationa nd the MassachusettsI nstituteo f Technology
406 InternationalO rganization
JonathanS wift, of Dean Inge and ReinholdN iebuhr". 93 Aristotle, the "great-
est philosopher and scientist of the ancient world,"4 believed that some
"'people are slaves by nature.... For a man who is able to belong to
another person is by nature a slave (for that is why he belongs to someone
else Almost two thousand years later, John Locke was still de-
. . . )."15
fendingt he enslavement of foreign captives, and "no realistic leader" in the
1700s considered the abolition of slavery a reasonable possibility in the
foreseeable future.6
Nevertheless, slavery was effectively abolishedi n the nineteenthc entury.7
Its disappearancer enders plausible the possibility that within decades both
slavery and internationalw ar will seem quainta nd unthinkablei n the modern
age. Skepticism about such a proposition may be almost universal, but as
Samuel Kim points out, "For centuries slavery was 'imagined' as an im-
mutable part of the natural social order. Hence it was utopian to advocate
its abolition."8 In a similar vein, Robert Axelrod observes that "'a major
goal of investigatingh ow cooperative norms in societal settings have been
established is a better understandingo f how to promote cooperative norms
in internationals ettings. This is not as utopian as it might seem because
international norms against slavery . . . are already strong."9 The main
implication (at least from the perspective of this article) of Axelrod's ar-
gumenti s clear. Slavery has disappearedb ecause internationanl ormsa gainst
3. KennethW altz, Man, the State, and War( New York:C olumbiaU niversityP ress, 1959),
p. 3.
4. Michael H. Hart, The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History (New
York: A & W Publishing,1 978),p . 105.
5. Quote from Aristotle's Politics, cited in David Brion Davis, Slavery and Human Progress
(New York:O xfordU niversityP ress, 1984),p . 3. See also WayneA mbler," Aristotleo n Nature
and Politics:T he Case of Slavery," Political Theory1 5 (August 1987),p p. 390-410; and Wylie
Sypher, "Hutchesona nd the 'Classical'T heory of Slavery," TheJ ournalo f Negro Slavery2 4
(July 1939),p . 264. Ambleri nsists that Aristotleh as been misinterpretedo n this point and that
Aristotle's standardsf or "natural"s lavery were so demandingt hat in effect he was speaking
out againsts lavery as it was actuallyp racticed.I f Ambleri s correct, the followingo bservation
by Sypheri s especially ironic:" For generationsb efore Europeb ecame awareo f the barbarous
treatmento f Negro slaves in the New Worldc olonies, jurists and philosophersa ccepted as a
mattero f course the 'classical' theory of slavery expoundedi n Aristotle'sP olitics."
6. Davis, Slavery and Human Progress, pp. 107-8. In anotherw ork, Davis notes that Ben-
jamin Franklino wned Negro slaves as late as 1750,a nd "it would appeart hat his desire to get
rid of them was more a producto f racial prejudicet han humanitarianism."S ee David Brion
Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
1966), p. 426.
7. Admittedly,s lavery has not been completelye radicatedi n moderno r even contemporary
times. "The institutionw as finally outlawed by Saudi Arabiai n 1962a nd by the Sultanateo f
Muscat and Oman in 1970," accordingt o Davis, Slavery and Human Progress, p. 379. Fur-
thermore, Stalin and Hitler both made massive use of slave labor, and even today there is a
controversya bout slavery in the Sudan. See UshariA hmadM ahmuda nd SuleymanA li Baldo,
Al Diein Massacre: Slavery in the Sudan (Khartoum: University of Khartoum, 1987).
8. Samuel Kim, The Questf or a Just WorldO rder( Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1984),
p. 81.
9. Robert Axelrod, "An EvolutionaryA pproacht o Norms," American Political Science
Review 80 (December 1986),p . 1110.
Internationalw ar 407
it are strong; presumably, additionale vils such as internationalw ar might
also disappear, and for similarr easons.
In this article, I address the validity of an argumentb ased on an analogy
between the abolitiono f slavery and the demise of internationalw ar. I begin
with a discussion of the rise and fall of slavery, placing special emphasis on
the contending explanations of slavery's disappearance. Next, I analyze
competing theoretical approachest o the role of ethical constraintsi n inter-
national politics. This discussion of slavery's demise and the theoretical
considerationo f the role of ethics in internationalp olitics then serves as the
basis for an evaluation of the assertion that the fate of slavery portends the
coming end of internationalw ar.
Explaining slavery's demise: moral progress
or declining profitability?
Slavery was common in ancient Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Greece, Rome,
India, and China. The extent to which ancient Greece relied on slaves plays
an importantr ole in two controversies relevant to the focus of this article,
possibly because the practice became prominenti n Greece.'0 One contro-
versy, cited by Moses Finley, involves the juxtaposition of the emergence
of important" Western" or liberal values and the concomitant prevalence
of slavery: "The cities in which individual freedom reached its highest
expression-most obviously Athens-were cities in which chattel slavery
flourished."" That the Greeks could formulate and espouse the values of
individualf reedom and democracy and simultaneouslye nslave so many in
their midst suggests that moralv alues do not have a powerfuld eterrente ffect
on slavery as a social practice.
The extent to which ancient Greece dependedo n slavery is also important
to an evaluation of a standardM arxist interpretationo f history, which fo-
cuses on "conflicts of economic classes correspondingt o specific modes of
production, such as slavery, feudalism, or capitalism."1 2 Ancient Greece,
in the view of FriedrichE ngels, was cruciallyd ependento n slavery: "With-
out slavery, no Greek state, no Greek art and science; without slavery, no
Roman empire . . . no modern Europe . . . no modern socialism."1 3 Just
10. "Though actual slaves never formed a significant percentage of the population of China,
or ancient Egypt, in Greece . . . the number kept increasing from the Persian Wars to the time
of Alexander," according to Davis, The Problem of Slavery, p. 75.
11. See Moses I. Finley, "Was Greek Civilization Based on Slave Labor?" in Moses I.
Finley, ed., Slavery in Classical Antiquity: Views and Controversies (Cambridge: W. Heffer,
1960), p. 3; cited in Davis, The Problem of Slavery.
12. Albert Fried and Ronald Sanders, eds., Socialist Thought (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor
Books, 1964), p. 278.
13. Quote from Friedrich Engels' essay, "Herr Eugen Duhring's Revolution in Science (Anti-
Duhring)," cited in M. M. Bober, Karl Marx's Interpretation of History (New York: Norton,
1965), p. 50.
408 InternationalO rganization
how important slavery was in the Roman Empire is a question that has
generateda controversym uch like that concerningG reece. Marxists cholars
agree that it was quite importanta nd that a fundamentalc ause of Roman
imperialismw as the economy's need for slaves. But David Brion Davis, in
a mannert ypical of critics of Marxista nalyses, asserts that the Romans did
not in fact establish an empire for the purpose of acquiring slaves, even
though he does acknowledge that "the Roman empire . . . bequeathed to
Christian Europe the juridical and philosophical foundations for modern
slavery." 14
The practice of slavery became distinctly less prevalent as the Roman
Empire declined, and for Marxists the reasons are clear. When slavery
disappears,i t does so because it is replacedb y a more efficienta nd therefore
more progressive mode of production.B ut Davis points out that "the prob-
lem of the decline of slavery in later Romanh istory is so entangledw ith the
question of the decline of the Empire itself that one must be suspicious of
any simple explanation."5' One can surmise that the "simple" explanation
evoking the most suspicion in Davis's mind is the Marxist model, which
suggests that slavery gave way to feudalismi n a naturalp rogressionb ecause
of internalc ontradictionsi n the slave system. The details of this process are
clearly debatable. "What are the productivef orces liberatedb y slavery that
unavoidably create a higher order . . . ? Does a slave mode of production
inevitably produce circumstances which must result in feudalism?" asks
M. M. Bober in Karl Marx's Interpretation of History. In Bober's opinion,
at least, there is "no answer" to these questions.'6N evertheless, it is quite
clear that in Western Europe "slavery declined and then virtually disap-
peared with the emergence of the feudal system." 17
Moral progress may have had something to do with this development.
John Nef points out that "before Dante's time [1215-1321A .D.], slavery had
almost entirelyd isappeareda mongt he Christianp eoples of WesternE urope,
partly, as Montesquieul ater assumed, 'because the law of the church made
it inadmissablet o reduce to servitude a brother in Christ.' "18 But slavery
did not entirely disappear from Europe in the Middle Ages; slavery-like
serfdomt hrivedi n Europef or centuries;a nd most important,m any powerful
European states were on the verge of inauguratingt he great transatlantic
slave trade in the following centuries. It is therefore difficultt o sustain an
argumentt hat the decline of slavery in medieval Europe was primarilyt he
result of an emerging moral consensus that slavery was wrong. The reluc-
tance of Christianst o enslave other Christiansc an be seen as an important
step in the direction of forming that consensus, but it seems that where
14. Davis, Slavery and Human Progress, p. 27.
15. Davis, The Problem of Slavery, p. 37.
16. Bober, Karl Marx's Interpretation of History, p. 54.
17. Davis, The Problem of Slavery, p. 37.
18. John U. Nef, War and Human Progress (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1950), p. 232.
Internationalw ar 409
slavery did disappeari n Europe, it was largely because economic processes
made it outmoded and less profitable." The decline of slavery was not due
to moral progress," asserts Durant in The Age of Faith (focusing on the
Middle Ages), "but to economic change. Productionu nder direct physical
compulsion proved less profitableo r convenient than productionu nder the
stimulus of acquisitive desire."19
Slavery in the New World
The discovery of the New World created powerful economic incentives
that led to a resurgence of slavery on a grand scale-probably, in fact, the
grandest of all time.20I n the period from 1502 to almost 1900, slaves were
brought from Africa to the Americas by the millions. (Native Americans
were used as slaves in the earlier years, but they proved "unsuitable" in
several ways, one of which was a stubbornt endency to die.) Great Britain
officially prohibitedt he slave trade in 1807 and played a role in bringingi t
to a virtualh alt by the latter half of the nineteenthc entury. The Britisha lso
legally ended slavery in territories under their control in 1833, while the
Civil Warb roughti t to an end in the United States by 1865.C uba and Brazil
were the last holdouts in the Western hemisphere;s lavery was abolished in
Cuba in 1886, while Brazil officially terminatedi t in 1888.
Many of the most influentiali nterpretationso f the demise of slavery in
the Western hemisphere have been "economistic,"s21 whether devised by
classical or liberal theorists on the one hand or by Marxist, radical scholars
on the other. As Davis indicates, both schools of thought convey "the
comfortablea ssurance that slavery was doomed by impersonall aws of his-
torical progress and that economic development ensured . . . social and
moral betterment."22I n short, both liberals and radicals, in their analyses
of slavery, typically exhibit a common faith in the rationality or utility-
maximizingb ehavioro f those involved in exploitings lave labor. When slav-
ery disappears,i n this view, it must have been forced out by a more efficient
system of production.23
Classical analyses of the demise of slavery that focus on market forces
date directly back to Adam Smith. In The Wealtho f Nations, Smith argued
19. Will Durant, The Age of Faith (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1950), p. 524.
20. Howard Temperley, "Capitalism, Slavery, and Ideology," Past and Present 75 (May
1977), p. 94.
21. Richard K. Ashley, "Three Modes of Economism," International Studies Quarterly 24
(December 1983), pp. 463-96.
22. Davis, Slavery and Human Progress, p. xiv.
23. This similarity in the views of classicists and Marxists is arguably less anomalous than
it might appear at first glance. See George Soule, Ideas of Great Economists (New York:
Mentor, 1952), p. 63. Soule points out that "the economic theory developed in Capital is almost
wholly classical, much though the discovery may surprise both orthodox followers of Smith
and Ricardo as well as orthodox socialists. Marx used no assumption not outlined by some
writer of the classical school, and his method of reasoning was, like theirs, deduction from a
few relatively simple postulates."
410 InternationalO rganization
that slaves can have no interest but "to eat as much as possible and to labour
as little as possible" and that work done by slaves is inevitablyt he "dearest
of any" (that is, grossly inefficient)a nd thus bound to disappeari f market
forces are allowed to operate.24D avis states that "Smith was certain," for
example, "that economic causes explainedt he abolitiono f bondagei n West-
ern Europe. Landowners simply came to realize that their profits would
increase by giving labor a share of the produce.'
'25
If slave labor is in principle so relatively unproductive,w hy did it appear
in the first place? Smith explained this anomaly for his theory with a rather
obviously ad hoc modification:h e asserted that slave owners engaged in the
dominationo f inferiorso ut of a love of power, even to the detrimento f their
economic self-interest.26
Marxista nalystsa re usuallym ore theoreticallyc onsistent. Slaverya ppears
and disappears, in their view, as the result of marketf orces. Slavery must
have been "rational"; otherwise the practice would not have been devel-
oped. Likewise, when it disappears,i t does so because the dialecticalp rocess
has reached the point at which a new mode of productionh as become more
efficient.
One of the most noted contemporarya nalyses of the disappearanceo f
slavery in the Western hemisphere is that of Eric Williams in Capitalism
and Slavery, which focuses on the history of slavery in the British West
Indies. Williams' thesis is straightforward:" When British capitalism de-
pended on the West Indies, they ignored or defended it. When British cap-
italism found the West Indian monopoly a nuisance, they destroyed West
Indian slavery as a first step in the destructiono f the West Indian monop-
oly. " 27
The thesis most cleary in contrast to the "economistic" arguments of
Williams and others emphasizes the importance of moral progress in the
process that broughta bout the eliminationo f slavery in the Western hemi-
sphere. CraneB rinton,i n A History of WesternM orals, succinctly describes
the heart of this debate:
The prize exhibit of those who can still believe in moral progress is the
Western achievement of abolishing chattel slavery.... The Marxists,
and not only the Marxists, never tire of insisting that slavery has al-
ways prevailed where it was economically profitablea nd has only been
abolished after it has been demonstratedt o at least most slave-owners
... that slavery is unprofitable.... The honest materialistw ould have
to admit that the completeness of abolition can be explained only by
24. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (New York: Norton, 1937), p. 63.
25. Davis, The Problem of Slavery, p. 434.
26. Ibid.
27. Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1944), p. 169.
Internationalw ar 411
the fact that the overwhelmingm ajorityo f Westernersc ame in a few
generations to feel that slavery is
wrong.28
Economism versus idealism
The British, abolition in the West Indies, and the end of the Atlantic slave
trade. The debate between adherentst o economistic models on the one hand
and defenders of moral progress on the other focuses on the motives of
policymakersa nd other political and economic agents involved in the abo-
lition of slavery, motives that were invisible and perhaps even obscured
intentionally. Who knows what evil (or virtue) lurks in the hearts of men
(or persons)? Nevertheless, there are differences in the empiricali mplica-
tions of these competing models which may allow at least a tentative eval-
uation of their relative validity. The economistic models, but not their com-
petitors, suggest that at some point slave owners realized that slave labor
had become relatively unprofitablea nd then more or less voluntarilyg ave
up their slaves in order to move on to some more profitablem ode of pro-
duction. But, as HowardT emperleyp oints out, "Virtuallyw ithoute xception
the principald efenders of slavery were, in fact, the slaveholderst hemselves
[and] . . . by contrast, those who spearheaded the attack on slavery were
almost invariablym en with no direct economic stake in the institution.'' 29
Economistic models also suggest that once slave owners had done the
rightt hingf rom an "expected utility" point of view, they reapedt he benefits
of their wisdom. Models emphasizingi dealism and moral progress, in con-
trast, imply that abolitiono ccurs even in the absence of an economic payoff
and perhaps even in the face of economic costs, since profit and loss cal-
culations have not been central, in this view, to the process that eliminated
slavery.
In the key case of the West Indies, the economistic implicationt hat ab-
olition was profitablet urns out ratherc learly to be wrong. Sugarp roduction
in the wake of abolition dropped precipitously-by a third overall and by
as much as 50 percent in specific cases, such as Jamaica.30T his hurt not
only the formers lave owners but also those who marketeda nd bought sugar
in Great Britain. Partly as a result of the abolition of slavery in the West
Indies, sugarg rowersi n Cubaa nd Brazil steppedu p the importationo f slaves
and the export of sugart o GreatB ritain.H avinge ffectively abolisheds lavery
in their own colonial holdings, the British stepped up the pressure against
the traffic in slaves to Cuba and Brazil. The economistic interpretationo f
this British policy is that it was a rationala ttempt by the British to prevent
competitorsf romo btainings lave labori n ordert o protectt he sugarp roducers
28. Crane Brinton, A History of Western Morals (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959), pp.
435-36.
29. Temperley, "Capitalism, Slavery, and Ideology," p. 97.
30. Ibid., p. 103.
412 InternationalO rganization
in their own colonies.31 But denying the Brazilians,f or example, free access
to slaves deprived the British of access to the cheap sugar and other com-
modities those newly imported slaves would have produced, and it also
depressedt he marketf or Britishe xports that could have been created among
slave owners and others in Brazil who might have reaped the economic
benefits of selling those slave-producedc ommodities.32
The abolition of slavery and of slave trade, then, was not clearly an
economically rational move by the British. Admittedly, the argumentt hat
abolition was based primarilyo n ethical considerationsi s weakened by the
fact that abolitionists as well as their opponents made consistent attempts
to conceal theirm otives.33F urthermoreT, emperleym akes a convincingc ase
for his assertion that abolitionistsi n Britaini n the 1830sb elieved that ending
slavery would bringe conomic benefits to Britain,t hus creatingd oubts about
the relative importance of the contributions of economic incentives and
ethical constraintst o the success of that movement.34N evertheless, evidence
regardingt he economically damaging effects of the abolition of both the
slave trade and slavery is sufficient to underminet o an importantd egree
economistic explanationso f Great Britain's role in slavery's demise. Tem-
perley, for example, concludes that Eric Williams' "own evidence fails to
supporth is conclusions . .. [and]f urthere vidence shows that the dominant
economic interests in Britain,f ar from being impelled to weaken or destroy
slavery, would have profitedf rom strengtheninga nd extending it."35 Simi-
larly, David Eltis asserts that the slave trade in the Americas was "killed
when its significance ... was greater than at any point in its history....
For [the] British, . . . there was profoundi ncompatibilityb etween economic
31. See, for example, Thomas E. Skidmore and Peter H. Smith, Modern Latin America (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 148. These authors point out that in 1826 "Britain
got from Brazil a treaty commitment to end the slave trade by 1830. The British wanted this
commitment for several reasons. One, usually stressed by modern day economic historians, is
that Britain feared that slave-produced sugar from Brazil would prove cheaper in the world
market than sugar from the British West Indies, where slavery had recently been abolished."
Skidmore and Smith unwittingly undermine the economistic argument here, since slavery was
not in fact abolished in the British West Indies until 1833, which was seven years after the date
(1826) they obtained the commitment from Brazil to end the slave trade by 1830. They also
explicitly support the "idealistic" or "moral progress" model, asserting that another reason
for British action against the slave trade to Brazil was "pressure on the British government
generated by British abolitionists" (p. 148).
32. David Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 12.
33. Davis, Slavery and Human Progress, p. 170. See also Roger Anstey, The Atlantic Slave
Trade and British Abolition, 1760-1810 (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1975);
and Seymour Drescher, Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition (Pittsburgh: Uni-
versity of Pittsburgh Press, 1977).
34. Temperley, "Capitalism, Slavery, and Ideology," p. 118.
35. Howard Temperley, "Anti-Slavery as Cultural Imperialism," in Christine Bolt and Sey-
mour Drescher, eds., Anti-Slavery, Religion, and Reform (Hamden, Conn.: Anchor Books,
1980), p. 339. Temperley cites Drescher, Econocide, in support of his assertion. In a later
volume, Capitalism and Antislavery (New York: Macmillan, 1986), Drescher maintains that
'most of the specifics of Williams' economic argument have ... been undermined" (p. 2).
Internationalw ar 413
self-interesta nd antislaveryp olicy." Furthermore,E ltis has no doubt about
why the antislavery policy was adopted: "The set of beliefs that branded
slavery and the slave trade as evil prevented the continuedi ncorporationo f
the slave trade and slavery into the British and indeed the world economic
system at a time when the British economy had the greatest need of such
institutions."36D avis concurs: "Britain's dogged pursuit of foreign slavers
was . . . contraryt o the nation's immediatep oliticala nd economic interests.
The impetus behind British anti-slaveryp olicies was mainly religious. 37
The American Civil War and abolitionism. Slavery in the United States
was abolished as a result of the Union's victory over the Confederacy in
the Civil War. The impact of that war on the practice of slavery can be
integratedi nto quite disparatee xplanatoryt hemes. One argues that slavery
was not an importanti ssue in that struggle, and so its disappearancea fter
the war was a side effect that cannot be convincinglya ttributedt o the ethical
concerns of abolitionists in the North. Another interpretst he Civil War as
a competition between one system based on "wage slavery" and another
based on chattel slavery, with the victory of the former representingt he
ascendance of a more efficient mode of production.38
But vital economic interests in the North, up to the time of the Civil War,
profitedh andsomelyf rom the toil of slaves in the South. Accordingt o Tem-
perley, "Northernc otton manufacturersw ere dependento n Southernp lan-
tation agriculturef or their raw materials.N ew York financeh ouses provided
Southernersw ith much of their capital and reaped their reward in interest.
New Englands hippersc arriedt he South's cotton to the factories of Europe
and the North."39
Granted, the clash of economic interests in the rapidly industrializing
North and the primarilya griculturalS outh created several issues, such as
the focus on tariffs, to cite a prominente xample, which made victory for
the Union beneficial to the pocketbooks of many in the North. However,
the predominante conomic classes in the North were not necessarily well
served by the abolition of slavery in the South. The antislaveryp osition of
the Union did bringc lear politicalb enefits, some of which were international
in scope, and those benefits, arguably,f lowed ultimatelyf romt he widespread
feeling that slavery was indefensibleo n ethical grounds. Even the South was
responsive to such considerations, as Eltis makes clear: "One of the first
actions of the Montgomery (Alabama)C onstitutionalC onvention of 1861,
36. Eltis, Economic Growth, pp. 15 and 28.
37. Davis, Slaverya nd HumanP rogress,p p. xxviii and2 36. See also IrvingK ristol," 'Human
Rights':T he Hidden Agenda," The National Interest 6 (Winter1 986-87), p. 10. In this recent
article on ethical issues in contemporaryi nternationapl olitics, Kristol asserts that "probably
the 'purest'-most moral, least self-interested-foreign policy action ever taken on behalf of
'humanr ights'w as the Britishn avy's suppressiono f the slave tradei n the nineteenthc entury."
38. Arguments et forth by A. M. Simons in Class Struggle in America, a 1903p ublication
cited in Temperley, "Capitalism,S lavery, and Ideology," pp. 101-2.
39. Temperley, "Capitalism,S lavery, and Ideology," pp. 101-2.