History 263
Fall 1999

Write a 4-5 page analytic essay (double-spaced) on the following topic. Use the questions as a starting point for your essay, but state your thesis in your own words. Be sure to explain and document your position by making reference to specific evidence from the assigned materials, including primary as well as secondary sources where appropriate. For scholarly apparatus, you may use brief parenthetical notations (e.g., Ashworth, p. 10) or more formal footnotes or endnotes. You are encouraged to use direct quotations but to keep them short. Acknowledge, where appropriate, evidence that tends to undermine your interpretation, and explain why you nonetheless stand by your position. Write clearly and concisely. End with a succinct concluding paragraph.

The paper is due in class on Friday, Sept. 24.

Ashworth argues, "The conflict between the sections can only be understood in terms of the differences between capitalist and slave modes of production"(ix). Yet Fogel characterizes slavery in the 19th-century American South as "a flexible, highly developed form of capitalism,"(64) and Oakes portrays southern slaveholders as committed to a "gospel of prosperity" that celebrated the pursuit of profit (127). Which side of this debate over the character of the Old South are you on? Were slavery and capitalism incompatible or mutually reinforcing? Were the social and economic values of northern entrepreneurs and southern slaveholders essentially the same or fundamentally different? Put another way, was the sectional conflict rooted in the presence of capitalism in the Old South or in its absence?