We re-characterize American slavery as inefficient, whereby emancipation generated substantial aggregate economic gains …

proximately concerned the geographical expansion of slavery, but ultimately bore on the existence of the institution of slavery … itself. This paper asks why in 1861 after seventy years of artful compromises over slavery civil conflict became unavoidable … historical analysis the paper concludes that in the years leading up to 1861 the outcome of the dispute over slavery had become …

affect its dominant values, we examine the case of the movement for the abolition of slavery in the late 18th and early 19th … century Britain, one of history's most well-known campaigns for social change, which coincided temporally with the Industrial … values and weak economic interest in the status quo to mobilize for change. Using data on anti-slavery petitions, membership …

development that is unobserved among poor populations of the twentieth century. Thus slavery may have created an unusual pattern …

compressions in history. We document that white Southern households holding more slave assets in 1860 lost substantially more …