Slavocracy : Economic Elite and the Support for Slavery

While today slavery is universally regarded as morally unacceptable, in the US Antebellum South, slavery was the political and social norm. Given that slaveholders were a minority of the voting population and racism was widespread, whether economic incentives could affect this equilibrium is unclear. This paper exploits the competitive forces generated by the Westward Expansion to show that economic conditions changed pro-slavery voting behavior and newspapers' content. Our results suggest a clientelistic mechanism where the slave-based economy had positive economic spillovers on the white wage laborers and provided the planter elite with the means to control the local political system