Off Track: The Railroading of Antebellum Southern Economic History*

Abstract

Sometimes it is possible to learn a great deal by examining familiar things whether physical objects, social conventions, or received ideas from radically different angles and perspectives. Artists and writers have long known this, and over time have often succeeded in challenging, complicating, and opening up experience, perception, and interpretation by changing focus and refraction. In art, for example, one thinks immediately of Henri Rousseau's landscapes and intentional distortions associated with German Expressionists. Similarly, in literature one can point to Jean Rhys' s Wide Sargasso Sea a reworking of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre from perspective of the mad woman in attic and Tom Stopparďs Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead , which reinterprets Hamlet from point of view of two minor characters, both brilliantly successful cases of creative repositioning. In their article, Railroad Construction and Antebellum Slave Prices, three economists Mark A. Yanochik, Mark Thornton, and Bradley T. Ewing (Y-T-E) adopt, wittingly or not, much same strategy. In this case an attempt is made to challenge or at least to complicate conventional story of antebellum Southern economic history by focusing not on cotton analogue to Jane Eyre or Hamlet among economic historians but on railroad construction, which authors view as vital to explaining not only high slave prices in 1850s but also overall robustness of Southern economy during that decade. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, this act of repositioning, of changing perspective is far less successful than efforts mentioned above by Rousseau, German Expressionists, Rhys, or Stoppard. Indeed, most that can be said about article is that it may help some, particularly uninitiated, to appreciate more fully degree to which cotton, slavery, transport improvements, and role of state were linked in antebellum South. Most economic historians of South, of course, have known this for some time. Before going any further, let me summarize authors' argument, which is fairly straightforward. At broadest level, Y-T-E argue that railroad construction had a major (and statistically significant) impact on determination of slave prices in antebellum South. The authors contend