First, the transatlantic slave trade moved, with great cruelty, captives into Brazil, the Caribbean, and the U.S. Second, the Haitian slave rebellion and revolution caused a beleaguered Napoleon to withdraw from French claims in the North American heartland and to sell the territory to the United States. It is an important theme of Baptist’s book that slavery, as practiced in the American Southwest, was no primitive agricultural practice, woefully inefficient and destined for extinction. Baptist argues that without Lincoln and a bloody civil war, slavery would have engulfed North America and lasted for decades beyond the  1860’s. I’m not sure who would argue otherwise, but it’s certainly important that every American understands this. Baptist briefly describes Lincoln’s death occurring in April 1865 after being stalked by his assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Indeed, if contemporary historiography on the Civil War is any indication, little has changed. First, it's not really about "American Capitalism" at all, but more generally about the role slavery made in the American economy (which wasn't capitalist for much of the time period covered in the book). Never have I read a book that has touched me in such a powerful, visceral, and connecting way to the legacy of my ancesters and how they shapped the world. The Half Has Never Been Told eBook $ 3.48. They question a) the premise that slavery was the primary driver of the industrial revolution rather than a failing antiquated economic model, and b) that torture was the primary driver of productivity gains by slaves in the cotton fields. I don't often publicly post reviews of the books I'm reading on Goodreads. In “The Half Has Never Been Told” Edward E. Baptist explores the engines of American economic growth during the first half of 19th century, and the consequences that growth had on American slavery and its victims. protected and expanded their slave-based economies with brilliant and aggressive The graphics are especially excellent for those of us who use Audible Books to complete our reading assignments. Following these interlocking events, America enjoyed an open door for the expansion of slavery into the foreseeable future. culture has ripped without credit from the fields and ghettos and presented as a But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy. Baptist lays out on his last pages his main thesis, namely that slavery was a huge capitalist enterprise that lifted the United States into the industrial age. Adding new money to the existing resources of abundant land and labor stirred up a roaring economic engine that made cotton America’s largest export and the value of captive persons equal to 20% of America’s wealth. Rather, the cotton industry was capitalist in every respect. These summaries and the infographics woven into them will help readers to benefit from Baptist’s key arguments, even if they don’t have time tackle a 400+ page book. surprised how much I learned from this book. This willingness to fight for the United States became the number one rationale for the Fifteenth Amendment which granted African Americans the vote. The third chapter looks at slavery’s business aspects, focusing mostly on the boom years between 1815 and 1819 in New Orleans.  The chapter revolves around three focuses: First, Mississippi Valley cotton’s role in the Industrial Revolution; second, the role that finance and banking played as an accelerant to slavery’s growth; and finally, the degrading effect that re-auctioning captives had for individuals who had probably already been slaves for their entire lives. What makes this book unique…..and outstanding….is the thoroughness with which Baptist explains the daisy-chain of economic motivations that led to the expansion of slavery from Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina at the end of the Revolutionary War into the then western states and ho. I saw The Color Purple. propaganda designed to romanticize Southern culture and the practice of But the book disappointed me on a couple of fronts. The writings and speeches of the abolitionists had an impact far greater than their numbers. Compromise, fugitive slave laws, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act,  are all political victories pushed by the The Act repealed the Missouri Compromise and permitted enslavers to move into any area in the former Louisiana Purchase territory with their human property. Guilt Loneliness, Exclusion, and Prejudice Expectations, Ambition, and Disappointment White men of the South have long been sensitive to slights and put-downs. Baptist, who teaches at Cornell University, is the author of a well-­regarded study of slavery in Florida. to cover over slavery’s enormity and atrocities. Also, I’m not sure the book ever proves that slavery has impacted modern American capitalism. Based on thousands of slave narratives and plantation records, The Half Has Never Been Told offers not only a radical revision of the history of slavery but a disturbing new understanding of the origins of American power that compels listeners to reckon with the violence and subjugation at the root of American supremacy. of what can be called original American music is usually Black music, which mainstream Many elites in the South were far from jubilant and in years to come dedicated themselves to turning back any Black progress signaled by the Emancipation Proclamation or the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. The plan was to divide the island into three new slave states. Accordingly, the Three-fifths Compromise, establishment of the Senate, So socially sanctioned rape joined honor-violence and greed as part of the degraded moral climate of frontier life in the cotton states. These musical forms include Having read the book, this feels very obvious to me now, but as I was reading it I could feel my own resistance to Baptist's thesis, because I have been taught well over many years to believe otherwise--that the plantation economy of South as well as slavery itself were backward economic institutions that were destined to be overwhelmed by the capital-intense North. Never have I read a book that has touched me in such a powerful, visceral, and connecting way to the legacy of my ancesters and how they shapped the world. Being no expert on the history of the American slave trade, I have no pretensions towards being able to second-guess the scholarship here but it seems sound, it just doesn't seem as surprising as Baptist suggests it should be. Planters counted on US Army troops to ride to their rescue when the large population of enslaved labor grew restive or when frustrations boiled over. 1: I would have never chosen to read, "The Half Has Never Been Told" by Edward Baptist if not for my involvement with the EmpowerWest coalition of black and white pastors and churches. Slaves and cotton mortgages were bundled and caused a crisis in the mid 1830's much like the housing crisis in 2007. Baptist's strongly supported thesis is that the economic growth of the 18th and 19th centuries was fueled neither by entrepreneurial drive, nor by technical innovation, but instead by the toil of enslaved people. In turn, the moral argument against the practice fizzled. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism Introduction-Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis Introduction Summary: “The Heart, 1937” In 1861, shortly after Virginia secedes from the United States in order to “protect slavery” (xvi), three enslaved men flee to Fortress Monroe, a Union fort in eastern Virginia. But, for me, this was such an important book that has changed my way of thinking in one sense: I now believe, even 150 years after the American Civil War, that some form of national and international reparations are necessary to the victims of the international slave trade and slavery in the United States (and elsewhere). This clear win for the slavery interests placed a deadening hand on Northerner’s designs on Cuba. The author appeared to want to write with nuance and style but instead ended up with something difficult to follow. Edward E. Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism is a profoundly revisionist history of American slavery and its place in national history from 1783 to 1865. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. I felt like I was scavenging the text for what useful tidbits he had hidden in there. Complicated political divisions threatened to divide the country in 1848-9.  To stabilize the situation Henry Clay drew up a Compromise of 1850, which attempted to deal with all open controversies in one omnibus decision.  The Compromise entailed these provisions: Initially the Clay’s Compromise was rejected, but Steven Douglas divvied up its provisions and got them passed separately.  At the passing of the Compromise of 1850, the nation, North and South, breathed a sign of relief.  But its provisions had not resolved the deeper divisions that only the Civil War could deal with.  What’s more, the Compromise probably bought the Northern states an additional decade to consolidate its industrial strength so it was strong enough to defeat the South in the early 1860’s. This is not a question. Having read the book, this feels very obvious to me now. Yet it is the truth.”, “Even today, most US history textbooks tell the story of the Louisiana Purchase without admitting that slave revolution in Saint-Domingue made it possible. The narrative style of following one person's story before zooming out to show the broader context combined with the central conceit of looking at the toll of slavery on each part of the slave's body felt fractured. THE HALF HAS NEVER BEEN TOLD. Tens of thousands did, many of whom joined ranks with the Union Army. But as tobacco returns shrank, cotton was entering its boom period. Edward E. Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism is an achievement of the first order. The Half Has Never Been Told unfolds in a roughly chronological manner, although Baptist plays with strict linearity by letting his chapters’ time periods overlap. I am about the business of educating myself more fully about slavery and race in America, from the antebellum period through Jim Crow and up to modern racial theory. Between 1815 and 1819 New Orleans, strategically situated on salt water at the Mississippi’s delta, grew into America’s fourth largest city.  A necessary component of New Orleans’s vibrancy was its need for financial services.  Newcomers flooded the city.  Speculators and settlers needed credit to purchase land and slaves.  Cotton bales ready for shipping accumulated on the Mississippi’s levees.  Â. Capping off all of these benefits was limitless free labor, which allowed planters to capitalize on the amazing convergence of favorable factors to create a money-making machine to which the entire nation became addicted. Why We Need to Study Slavery in America Now. An in-depth look at how America became the great country that it is because of the worst institution ever created - slavery. September 9th 2014 We didn’t hear this in To create our... Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution—the nation’s original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America’s later success. He did not seek to disguise to himself the evils which were inseparably connected with their condition, or that man too oft abused the power he owned; but in view of all this, in view of the great, commanding truth, that wherever civilized man exists, there is the dividing line of the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the thinking and the labouring, in view of the God-proclaimed fact that “all Creation toileth and groaneth together,” and that labour and suffering are the solemn sacraments of life, he believed that the slaves of the South were blest beyond the pallid slaves of Europe, or the anxious, care-worn labourers of the North. For example, bluegrass, usually credited to It was American, capitalist, efficiency-driven, and adaptive. It's a powerful combination. These digressions reveal more about slavery, but they don’t really advance the theme. The collateral damage of this slack moral climate took the form of mulatto “children of the plantation” and humiliated wives. Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Study Guide of “The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism” by Edward E. Baptist. Just because enslaved persons harvested a crop was no guarantee that that product would remain profitable. I think I've always known what most people know. When negotiated agreements permitted half of America’s new states to enter the union as slave states those agreements bestowed legitimacy on the practice.   As policy-makers struck agreements they wove slavery more and more into the fabric of the nation. society that profited from it. Her novel, a love story, bristles with passages that trot out the pro-slavery arguments that, until recently, dominated America’s collective memory of the nineteenth century South. THE HALF HAS NEVER BEEN TOLD: Summary and Notes Introduction The Half Has Never Been Told’s introduction is organized around a WPA interview of a former slave in 1938 in Danville, Virginia. The first chapter, titled, “Feet” shows how slavery allowed the newly established United States solve several of its initial challenges.  The Atlantic slave trade deposited the great majority of captive Africans at ports in the Caribbean and Brazil.  Nevertheless, the smaller numbers of captives, totaling about 20% of the population, brought to what became the United States played a decisive role in enabling the country prosper economically and remain united politically.  The simple fact that slaves were a moveable form of capital allowed their owners to transport them to Western territories where they could labor in new crops, notably cotton. Many in the North and even worldwide were able to invest in slavery among them were the Rothschilds and the Principality of Monaco which was still trying to recover some of its losses as late as the 1940's. slavery. Thank you Doug for your very informative summary. Baptist  brings to light the hopelessness of the captives themselves who had their own range of feelings and aspirations. Chapter 7 is entitled ‘Seed’, again with multiple meanings. The book very skillfully mixes a wrenching portrayal of individual human suffering, gleaned from oral histories of former slaves, with a solid economic history of the U.S. economy during the slave era. Planters were perpetually yearning to expand onto new land further and further to the west during the King Cotton era. A final thought kept running through my mind as I worked through Baptist’s The authors are clear at the start that they do not doubt the horrific history of slavery recounted in Baptis. Not surprisingly, the toll that this torture-based economy took from the enslaved workers was enormous. Need a powerpoint for a study of this book. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. New York: Basic Books, 2014. Lincoln later published his debate notes in a book. Slavery re-invented itself in the early 1800’s, relocated, attracted increased and stable financing and was growing. THE HALF HAS NEVER BEEN TOLD SLAVERY AND THE MAKING OF AMERICAN CAPITALISM. The book very skillfully mixes a wrenching portrayal of individual human suffering, gleaned from oral histories of former slaves, with a solid economic history of the U.S. economy during the slave era. There is no innovation and creativity without failure. An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World. This failure forced Blacks into the pseudo-slavery of the sharecropping system as a main form of employment and southern agricultural production. This is not a question. He’s making the economic argument that American slavery was not only big, but that it was essentially capitalist. I am about the business of educating myself more fully about slavery and race in America, from the antebellum period through Jim Crow and up to modern racial theory. First, he does a great job of showing the stark brutality and cruelty of slavery. The Abolitionists in the North had influence that exceeded their numbers, but their moral suasion never tipped the opinion scales against King Cotton. The Half Has Never Been Told’s introduction is organized around a WPA interview of a former slave in 1938 in Danville, Virginia.  Some 70 years before, Danville had been a hub of Civil War activity.  Following the war, the interviewee, Lorenzo Ivy, trained to be a school teacher.Â, During the years that stretched between the Civil War and the interview, Americans had been lulled into a sanitized recollection of slavery and race in their society.  What began with emancipation was a promise of freedom and dignity for newly freed African captives.  But the collapse of Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the rise of racism nationwide twisted the promise into a betrayal.  Further, a consensus emerged among historians and scientists that Africans were somehow destined to inferiority, that slavery was not driven by lust for profit, and that captivity was the natural habitation for Africans.Â, Quietly, Americans disassociated slavery with the accelerating prosperity that they were enjoying and crediting themselves with creating.  Myths about slavery persisted even after the Civil Rights movement’s efforts toward desegregation.  One such myth was that slavery was not essentially American, nor part of capitalism’s DNA.  It is as if the country was telling itself, “This wasn’t us.  This wasn’t how we developed and generated our wealth.”Â, Also lost in the Great Sanitizing is the remembrance of just how cruel slavery was.  If slavery simply denied workers a paycheck and civil liberties then the Emancipation Proclamation and the granting of citizenship should have rectified any wrongs done.  If, on the other hand, slavery was unthinkably cruel, kills people, tears apart families, denigrates people’s humanity, and rips people from their home and heritage, then making right those wrongs is a much deeper problem.  The book’s title, words attributed to Lorenzo Ivy, sums up the need to tell the whole truth about slavery by recovering the “half that hasn’t been told.”  That untold half isn’t that slavery was an anomaly in Southern life and was on the brink of collapse anyway.  What needs to be told is that it metastasized through the  19th century into an economic and social colossus.Â. The cotton economy suffered very few if any setbacks in Washington. The other fault of this book is that there are digressions to the theme with is economics and capital. What makes this book unique…..and outstanding….is the thoroughness with which Baptist explains the daisy-chain of economic motivations that led to the expansion of slavery from Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina at the end of the Revolutionary War into the then western states and how those motivations conspired to rebrutalize slavery in order to establish and then perpetuate economic gain. It is one of the best books I have ever read and in my top three historical texts. as a black lie. In his expansive The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, Cornell historian Edward E. Baptist fleshes out the incomplete story of slavery most of us received in school. Bible > 1 Kings > Chapter 10 > Verse 7 ... And I did not believe them that told me, till I came myself, and saw with my own eyes, and have found that the half hath not been told me: thy wisdom and thy works, exceed the fame which I heard. Baptist seems to have a few different goals in mind with this history of slavery. a Congressman from Montana who won his election after bodyslamming a reporter, and the president praising him for it. Â, The American South’s cotton production grew and created colossal wealth because it was embedded in the textile-centered Industrial Revolution. Several spinning and weaving innovations in England made it the world’sleader in textile output.  Additionally, England’s newly acquired ability to turn heat into movement through steam engines gave her a worldwide lead in textile production and shipping with steamships, steamboats, and locomotives. Following the war, the interviewee, Lorenzo Ivy, trained to be a school teacher. This book is so beautifully written and so eye-opening. Interesting to learn about the economics of American slavery. Authors put forth dramatic claims to new conclusions, topics, and evidence. book. Additionally, some chapters, like the "Right Hand," belabored the metaphor while others, like "Backs" seemed to abandon it altogether. I saw The Color Purple. financial assets than as human beings. people to finance a college education or a trip to Europe. school. I teach about "othering" and the Noble Savage in my AP class. I read Beloved. dominated American politics from the constitutional era until the Civil War. Welcome back. The cotton produced by this army of laborers was America’s largest export and the 19th century’s key commodity which powered the industrial revolution and clothed the world. What you might not have taken away from the ensuing media storm is that "The Half Has Never Been Told" is quite a gripping read. I listened to the audiobook and the narration was also excellent. The decision whether the state would be slave or free was deferred to a later time to be decided by vote of the settlers. These digressions reveal more about slavery, but they don’t really advance the theme. Interesting to learn about the economics of American slavery. This book is full of discoveries about slavery and american history. Many, however, expressed their humanity by bestowing tiny favors on one another in the few hours available at night in their cabins.  From this slave cabin culture emerged some of the most distinct forms of Black culture including the Black English Dialect, free-form dancing, and several new musical forms.  The banjo, as it turns out, is not a uniquely American instrument, but an import from Africa, which has gone on to become a beloved American tradition.    Much the same can be said of the Blues, Jazz, Soul, Rap, Ragtime, and other distinctly African American innovations. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. The economy based on enslaved workers was more profitable than ever and its proponents were beginning to pursue a vision of America as an ever-expanding slaved-based machine. Still the book is probably worth your library card or at a discounted price. A social and economic history of the rise of slavery and cotton growing in the South. "The Half Has Never Been Told is a true marvel. “The idea that the commodification and suffering and forced labor of African Americans is what made the United States powerful and rich is not an idea that people necessarily are happy to hear. In “The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism,” Cornell professor Edward E. Baptist makes a persuasive case that slavery wasn’t like that at all. America Enslavers might sell a few enslaved In “The Half Has Never Been Told” Edward E. Baptist explores the engines of American economic growth during the first half of 19th century, and the consequences that growth had on American slavery and its victims. The writing is mostly readable though there are times where the writing becomes inexplicably lyrical. Slave state politicians, for example, I teach about "othering" and the Noble Savage in my AP class. Cotton’s production sequence begins with vast acreage in near-tropical climates.  What follows is planting, harvesting, shipping, processing, and export.  In 1815 the weak link in the production of cloth was the planting and harvesting, which wasn’t mechanized until the late 1920’s. Throughout the 19th century, the wholesale theft of human lives, the separation of children from parents, the use of torture to extract unrelenting toil from human bodies met very little moral hesitation. the American South, with tacit permission from the rest of the country, put In The Half Has Never Been Told, historian Edward E. Baptist reveals the alarming extent to which slavery shaped our country politically, morally, and most of all, economically. It is a link to multiple blogposts of a professor of economics at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia who critiques Baptist's book, and should be posted as a "reply" to the question above. by Basic Books, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. But the texts I've been reading are revelatory, beginning with James Baldwi. slavery caucus. The Bank of the United States provided much of the credit planters needed to purchase land.  And private individuals also extended credit, bought cotton futures, and provided a host of financial services.  Baptist gives a vivid description of entrepreneurs wheeling and dealing and lubricating the entire economy with their deal-making, while gathered in the French Quarter’s Mospero’s Coffee House. My family was military, so we were first generation Floridians with no southern heritage, and thankfully my mom has alw. Neither did our kids. The Three-fifths Compromise, especially when combined with the Great Compromise (establishing the Senate), and the electoral college granted extraordinary power to southern states with large slave populations. English Revised Version Back in the fields and under the whip, enslaved Blacks would often carry on in a listless way. cabins, fields, and later in slums and night clubs. A final factor in the expansion of slavery was an idea which circulated among Whites held that too great a concentration of Blacks, captive or free was a threat and dispersing African descent people throughout the country would keep their numbers from becoming too numerous.