A Criticism of DiLorenzo's Use of Fogel and Engerman's "Time on the Cross" When Defending Peaceful Emancipation

The third chapter of Thomas J. DiLorenzo’s book, the Real Lincoln, contains many shocking arguments. DiLorenzo begins the chapter by arguing that Lincoln was not committed to emancipation because he had opportunities to emancipate the slaves but he did not do so. He then argues that Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was a scam or a “political gimmick.”¹ He thinks that Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation because the North was losing the war. He also talks about some of the negative reactions to the Emancipation Proclamation that occurred in the North, such as army desertion and riots in New York City. Finally, at the end of the chapter, he gets to a section called “Emancipation Around the World.” In this final section, he talks about peaceful emancipation as an alternative to the bloody Civil War or War between the States. DiLorenzo is interested in the fact that many countries around the world were able to abolish slavery peacefully, and he speculates about why Lincoln did not adopt peaceful emancipation. He feels that Lincoln did what he did because he wanted a strong centralized government, euphemistically referred to as “saving the Union.”²

In this article, I want to dwell on the first part of his section called “Emancipation Around the World.” I find DiLorenzo’s argument in this section to be suspicious. Something about it feels wrong to me. DiLorenzo supports two arguments, both taken from Fogel and Engerman’s book Time on the Cross. The first argument concerns Lincoln’s motives. DiLorenzo writes that “Lincoln’s motivations were identical to those of the Central American revolutionaries who invoked violence in the fight against slavery as a tool to gain or expand state power.”³ The second argument, again from Fogel and Engerman’s book Time on the Cross, is about the economic logic behind plans for compensated emancipation.⁴ My concern is about how DiLorenzo arrived at these arguments. The problem I have is that DiLorenzo says one thing and Fogel and Engerman say the exact opposite. The contradictions between the two books are numerous. However, when the discussion finally arrives at the topic of peaceful emancipation, DiLorenzo suddenly and unexpectedly changes from opposition to agreement. This abrupt change in DiLorenzo’s position is what bothers me the most.

So now I want to take a more detailed look at DiLorenzo’s arguments. DiLorenzo’s arguments are found on pages 47 to 49 in the Real Lincoln. I am also going to go through Fogel and Engerman’s arguments found on pages 29 to 37 of their book, Time on the Cross. Basically here is what I am doing. I am reading DiLorenzo and his source document simultaneously in order to see where DiLorenzo follows his source and where he deviates from his source.

Religion Is for and against Slavery

DiLorenzo tells us about how religion is against slavery. He writes, near the beginning of the section titled “Emancipation Around the World,” that “the Quakers were among the first abolitionists because of their belief that slavery was an offense against God.”⁵ But when Fogel and Engerman being their section called “the Course of Emancipation,” they attack religion, both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, because both supported slavery. Fogel and Engerman tell us that

the Catholic Church not only rationalized the possession of slaves by others, but was itself a major owner of slaves. Even before the Jesuits began to encourage the importation of Africans into the New World, the Church actively promoted slavery. In 1375, Pope Gregory XI, viewing bondage as a just punishment for those who resisted the papacy, ordered the enslavement of excommunicated Florentines whenever they were captured. And in 1488 Pope Innocent VIII accepted a gift of a hundred Moorish slaves from Ferdinand of Spain and then distributed them to various cardinals and nobles.⁶

Fogel and Engerman argue that Protestantism was just as bad as Catholicism on the issue of slavery:

Differences on the legitimacy of servitude were not among the issues that motivated the Protestant Reformation. “When Swabian serfs appealed for emancipation in 1525, holding that Christ had died to set men free, Martin Luther was as horrified as any orthodox Catholic.” He considered that demand to be a distortion of Scripture which, if permitted, would confuse Christ’s spiritual kingdom with the world of affairs. He reaffirmed Saint Paul’s dictum that “masters and slaves must accept their present stations, for the earthly kingdom could not survive unless some men were free and some were slaves.”⁷

For Fogel and Engerman, religion exacerbates the problem of slavery. For DiLorenzo, religion undermines slavery. They hold opposite positions.

Natural Rights Are for and against Slavery

Immediately after the argument about Quakers, DiLorenzo brings up an argument about changes in philosophy. DiLorenzo tells us that

the philosophy of the Enlightenment, which championed individual rights and the idea of equality under the law, added fuel to the argument that all human beings have natural rights to life, liberty, and property and ought to be treated equally under the law.⁸

Immediately after the argument about Protestantism, Fogel and Engerman bring up an argument about natural rights and the defense of slavery. Notice, once again, that Fogel and Engerman’s argument contradicts DiLorenzo’s argument:

As prominent a champion of the “inalienable rights of man” as John Locke wrote a provision for slavery into his draft of the “Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina,” and also became an investor in the Royal African Company, the organization that enjoyed the British monopoly of the African slave trade. Thus, the man who formulated the theory of natural liberty, and whose thesis regarding the moral obligation of men to take up arms in defense of liberty later inspired many revolutionaries and abolitionists was, nevertheless, a staunch defender of slavery.⁹

The Industrial Revolution Threatened and Did Not Threaten Slavery

Next, DiLorenzo brings up the Industrial Revolution. He writes that “the advent of the industrial revolution added economic pressures as well,”¹⁰ meaning that he thinks the industrial revolution helped abolish slavery. Fogel and Engerman say that the opposite is true:

The course of slavery in the cities does not prove that slavery was incompatible with an industrial system or that slaves were unable to cope with an industrial regimen. Slaves employed in industry compared favorably with free workers in diligence and efficiency. Far from declining, the demand for slaves was actually increasing more rapidly in urban areas than in the countryside.¹¹

Again, a contradiction exists between DiLorenzo’s argument and Fogel and Engerman’s argument.

Slave Labor Was Inefficient and Efficient

DiLorenzo says that “slave labor is inherently inefficient compared to free labor.”¹² Fogel and Engerman say the opposite. In fact, they claim that slavery was more efficient than free labor:

Slave agriculture was not inefficient compared with free agriculture. Economies of large-scale operation, effective management, and intensive utilization of labor and capital made southern slave agriculture 35 percent more efficient than the northern system of family farming.¹³

Slavery Was Unprofitable and Profitable

DiLorenzo claims that slavery was an unprofitable system. He cites the Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises who wrote that “servile labor disappeared because it could not stand the competition of free labor; its profitability sealed its doom in the market economy.”¹⁴ Fogel and Engerman, predictably, disagree with DiLorenzo on both points. First, they say that slave labor could compete with free labor. They write that “the typical slave field hand was not lazy, inept, and unproductive. On average he was harder-working and more efficient than his white counterpart.”¹⁵ Furthermore, according to Fogel and Engerman, slavery was a highly profitable system:

Slavery was not a system irrationally kept in existence by plantation owners who failed to perceive or were indifferent to their best economic interests. The purchase of a slave was generally a highly profitable investment which yielded rates of return that compared favorably with the most outstanding investment opportunities in manufacturing.¹⁶

Fogel and Engerman add another shocking detail concerning the future economic expectations of the slaveowners. According the Fogel and Engerman, the slaveowners did not see their system collapsing or disappearing because they were highly optimistic about slavery’s future:

Slaveowners were not becoming pessimistic about the future of their system during the decade that preceded the Civil War. The rise of the secessionist movement coincided with a wave of optimism. On the eve of the Civil War, slaveholders anticipated an era of unprecedented prosperity.¹⁷

Finally, Fogel and Engerman claim that “as the Civil War approached, slavery as an economic system was never stronger and the trend was toward even further entrenchment.”¹⁸

I think the gap between the two books is unbridgeable. If I believe DiLorenzo and Mises, then I have to believe that slavery was about to collapse in the United States because it was a terrible economic system. But if I believe Fogel and Engerman, then I have to believe that slavery was a wonderful economic system with a bright future.

Then a “Miracle” Occurs and DiLorenzo Starts Agreeing with Fogel and Engerman

Then, all of a sudden, DiLorenzo starts to agree with Fogel and Engerman. DiLorenzo cites Fogel and Engerman twice approvingly. First, he likes this passage about what happened in Colombia and Venezuela during their slave emancipations:

There was violence in some other countries during the abolition of slavery, but as Fogel and Engerman point out, “In countries such as Colombia and Venezuela the emancipation of slaves became an instrument of the revolutionaries who sought state power”; it was not motivated by a desire for emancipation per se.¹⁹

Why does DiLorenzo approvingly cite this passage? The reason is because it agrees with his thesis that says Lincoln’s real motive was to centralize all power in Washington, D.C.:

In this regard Lincoln’s motivations were identical to those of the Central American revolutionaries who invoked violence in the fight against slavery as a tool to gain or expand state power.²⁰

DiLorenzo also favorably cites Fogel and Engerman when they discuss the economic logic behind compensated emancipation. This passage suggests that slaveowners will support compensated emancipation because it costs them nothing to do so. “In other words, gradual abolition imposed an average cost on slaveholders . . . quite close to zero.”²¹

My fear is that DiLorenzo’s arguments might be construed as a form of cherry-picking. My suspicion is that DiLorenzo went into Time on the Cross, a book that is hostile to many of his arguments, and then he carefully selected a few passages that agree with his thesis. DiLorenzo never explains why these two passages from Fogel and Engerman are valid and legitimate for him to use in his thesis. In addition, DiLorenzo never explains why all those other arguments made by Fogel and Engerman (slavery is profitable; slave labor is compatible with industrialization; slave labor is efficient and so on) are wrong. (For DiLorenzo’s thesis to work, he must prove Fogel and Engerman wrong on all of their arguments, except, of course, for the two arguments that DiLorenzo agrees with). So if I were to give DiLorenzo some advice, I think he needs to better justify to the reader why he is allowed to selectively use those two passages from Fogel and Engerman like this.

1. Thomas J. DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003), 36.

2. Thomas J. DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003), 53.

3. Thomas J. DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003), 48.

4. Thomas J. DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003), 49.

5. Thomas J. DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003), 47.

6. Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995), 30, https://archive.org/details/timeoncross00robe.

7. Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995), 30-31, https://archive.org/details/timeoncross00robe.

8. Thomas J. DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003), 47.

9. Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995), 31, https://archive.org/details/timeoncross00robe.

10. Thomas J. DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003), 47.

11. Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995), 5, https://archive.org/details/timeoncross00robe.

12. Thomas J. DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003), 47.

13. Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995), 5, https://archive.org/details/timeoncross00robe.

14. Thomas J. DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003), 47-48.

15. Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995), 5, https://archive.org/details/timeoncross00robe.

16. Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995), 4, https://archive.org/details/timeoncross00robe.

17. Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995), 5, https://archive.org/details/timeoncross00robe.

18. Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995), 5, https://archive.org/details/timeoncross00robe.

19. Thomas J. DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003), 48.

20. Thomas J. DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003), 48.

21. Thomas J. DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003), 49.