Financial History Issue 122 (Summer 2017) | Page 16

Secession erupted not when the North moved to abolish slavery, but merely when its candidate for President, Abraham Lin- coln, hinted that he would eliminate fed- eral subsidies for slavery. Aware that those subsidies were what made slavery profit- able, enslavers faced the real possibil- ity of slavery unwinding rather quickly, certainly at a great loss to themselves, or instigating a war that they just might win. They of course chose the latter. Throughout history, enslavers have received massive public subsidies in order to be able to afford to keep people enslaved. Not even so-called voluntary slaves, those who enslaved themselves in times of famine in order to survive, wanted to be slaves. Slaves almost con- stantly resisted their bondage in ways large and small. Some, like Aesop (of fable fame), perplexed their masters at every turn. Others played the dutiful servant until an opportune time to escape pre- sented itself. Still others joined Spartacus or other slave rebels. Yet others lever- aged knowledge of their masters’ affairs (amorous or business) to gain advantages. Slaves were a most troublesome property, as evidenced by the large, complex legal codes that applied to them wherever their legality remained sacrosanct. Today, slavery is illegal, but it still cre- ates large negative externalities. Its illegal- ity encourages corruption, ranging from payoffs to border guards and police offi- cers to the wholesale purchase of judges and other local administrators. As Kevin Bales shows in his most recent book, Blood and Earth: Modern Slavery, Eco- cide, and the Secret to Saving the World (2016), today’s slaves are at the literal cutting edge of deforestation, on deck for over-fishing and adding fuel to the fires of pollution-spewing brick kilns and other dirty manufacturing ventures. The eco- nomic metaphor of slavery as pollution has become reality as illicit activities like drug, arms and sex trafficking reinforce and strengthen each other. Bales hopes that painting enslavers as polluters will help add some green momentum to the modern antislavery movement. The fact that slavery is a moral abomination and bad for economic 14    FINANCIAL HISTORY  |  Summer 2017  | www.MoAF.org growth and development has thus far not proven sufficient motivation for most people to donate to Free the Slaves or other antislavery NGOs. Some govern- ments, though, are waking up to the fact that despite what some historians of capi- talism argue, allowing slavery to persist in their nations or other jurisdictions is not about to stimulate growth. For growth, they need to look to the policies of Alex- ander Hamilton, who was a major critic of slavery.  Robert E. Wright is the Nef Family Chair of Political Economy at Augustana Uni- versity, where he has taught courses in business, economics, government and history since 2009. He is the co-author or co-editor of more than 20 books, includ- ing most recently The Poverty of Slavery: How Unfree Labor Pollutes the Econ- omy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), from which this article has been adapted. He is on the editorial advisory board of Finan- cial History magazine and has served on the board of Historians Against Slavery, an antislavery NGO, since 2012.