Hoyt Bleakley (UMich): A Compact Oligarchy: Slaveholding and Antebellum Southern Politics
Abstract: Understanding politicians’ behavior is especially important for the Late Antebellum, when that generation may have ‘blundered’ into a bloody conflict: the US Civil War. We link newly assembled data on congressional slaveholding to voting in the U.S. Congress in 1839-1861. While slaveholding is a powerful predictor of voting ideology and key roll calls, this relationship nearly vanishes if we control for representing a slave state. Relatedly, in slave states, the overwhelming majority of congressmen were slaveholders, even though the vast majority of eligible voters in that region were not. Case studies illustrate how nonslaveholders conformed to dominant voting behavior. On the political ladder, nonslaveholders were less represented at each higher rung. This culminated in “a compact oligarchy” of slaveholders, alongside a few nonslaveholders of similar ideology. The system brought its peculiar interests to the forefront.
Economics
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