Economic History Association
Capitalism and Freedom: Manumissions and the Slave Market in Louisiana, 1725-1820
Author(s): Shawn Cole
Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 65, No. 4 (Dec., 2005), pp. 1008-1027
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Economic History Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3874912 .
Accessed: 14/06/2012 11:47
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
Cambridge University Press and Economic History Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,
preserve and extend access to The Journal of Economic History.
http://www.jstor.org
Capitalismand Freedom: Manumissions
and the Slave Marketin Louisiana,
1725-1820
SHAWN COLE
I use a rich new dataset of Louisiana slave records to answer long-standing
questions about manumission. I examine who was manumitted,by whom, and
whether manumittees paid prices above market for their freedom, shedding
some light on the debate of the efficiency of slavery. Legal changes after the
Louisiana Purchaseallow us to conclude that manumissionlaws were quite importantin determiningthe terms at which manumissionagreementswere struck:
when slaves lost the right to sue for self-purchaseat marketprice, there was a
precipitousdrop in the numberof manumissions,while prices paid increased.
ontemporarynarratives and historical sources provide a general
view of manumissionin the United States and other slave societies.
But little is known of the details, and almost nothing of the economics.
How effective was manumissionin overcoming the severe agency costs
that must be present in any situation of unfree labor? Who was manumitted? By whom? Did slaves pay "fair market prices," or did slave
owners exploit their monopoly power? Using a remarkablenew data
set, this articlewill answer these questionswithin the context of slavery
in Louisianaat the turnof the nineteenthcentury,providingthe first real
empiricalevidence on the economics of manumission.
Manumission,the freeing of a slave from bondage, has served as a
powerful incentive for slaves throughout history. It was common
enough in ancient times that economic historianshave gone as far as to
describe the Roman labor system as a functioninglabor market,encouraging slaves to work cooperativelywith their owners.' Although generally permittedby U.S. state legal codes until the middle of the nineteenth century, manumission was much less common in the United
The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 65, No. 4 (December 2005). C The Economic
HistoryAssociation. All rights reserved.ISSN 0022-0507.
Shawn Cole is Assistant Professor, HarvardBusiness School, Soldiers Field Road, Boston,
MA 02163. E-mail: [email protected].
I am grateful to Dora Costa for guidance, as well as Victor Chernozhukov,Esther Duflo,
Gwendolyn Hall, Andrei Levchenko, Ani Mukherji,Peter Temin, Petia Topalova, the Editors
(JeremyAtack and Gavin Wright), one anonymousreferee, and participantsat the 2003 NBER
Summer Institute (Development of the American Economy) and MIT Development Lunch
workshop. Financial support from a National Science FoundationGraduateResearch Fellowship is acknowledged.Errorsand omissions are mine alone.
STemin, "Labor Supply." See Fenoaltea, "Slavery," for a comprehensive discussion of
manumissionin a historicalperspective.
1008
Capitalismand Freedom
1009
States than in ancientRome or Greece.2 Stefano Fenoalteaattributesthe
relative infrequence of manumission to the nature of the work performed by U.S. slaves.3He contends that pain ("the lash") can generate
greaterwork effort, but not more care, whereas positive rewardsare effective in eliciting care. Thus, manumissionwould not be an optimal incentive for difficult manuallabor, such as plantationfarming,the major
occupationof slaves in the South.
Even so, there were many exceptions. A system of "termslavery"in
Marylandat the turn of the nineteenthcenturyallowed a slave holder to
make a legally binding agreementwith a slave to free her after a certain
numberof years, in returnfor greaterand more reliable work effort. A
special court was set up to adjudicate disputes between slaves and
slave-holders who had made this agreement.4Spanish-ruledterritories
had a system of coartaci6n (described in detail in what follows),
whereby a slave could sue for freedom if she had enough money to
compensateher owner.
The incentive schemes designed by slave owners could be complex:
CharlesDew describes the operationsof an iron forge staffed by slaves
in Virginia in the early nineteenth century.5The owner designed an
"overworksystem" whereby slaves were obliged to provide a standard
amount of output per day, and were paid at a piece rate equal to the
wages for free labor for output above their quota. Slaves were allowed
to use their wages to purchase food and goods (above the standardration), but there is only one documentedexample of a slave purchasing
his freedom.
The idea that manumissionprovided a powerful performanceincentive was partof the early cliometric debate over the profitabilityof slavery. In response to the pioneering work of Alfred Conrad and John
Meyer,6John Moes arguedthat the U.S. system of slavery was not efficient, because a system encouragingmanumissionwas:
to the advantage of the owner because it gave the slave an incentive to work
well and in general to make himself agreeable to his master . . . the idea that
slavery is profitable (and therefore likely to be maintained)when slave prices
are high does not stand up against this modem notion of opportunitycost but is
the result of overlooking the most relevantalternativeopportunity:that of allowing the slave to buy himself.7
2 Matison, "Manumission."
3 Fenoaltea,"Slavery."
4Whitman,"DiverseGoodCauses."
5Dew, Bond.
6 Conradand Meyer, "Economics"and "Reply."
7Moes, "Economics,"pp. 183-84.
1010
Cole
Moes adduced an anecdote about a philanthropistwho reportedhaving agreed to pay the slaves on his plantationfor work on Saturday,in
return for their eventual freedom. The philanthropistclaimed to have
received enough in paymentsto replace the departedslaves with double
theirnumber.
Although closer scrutinyby Fenoaltearevealed this story to be apocryphal,the principlecould still hold.8In Coasianterms, there are at least
two reasons why manumission could be more efficient than slavery:
first, productivity effects aside, slaves may value their freedom more
than masters value their enslavement. Second, to the extent that there
are frictions in inducing slaves to exert effort, the prospect of manumission even at marketprice (or above) could provide a powerful incentive
motivating slaves to work. Thus, we might reasonablyexpect that property rights will eventually be transferredto those who value them most,
and that manumissionwould thus be an importantfeatureof U.S. slave
society. Conrad and Meyer's response to this criticism was agnostic:
"... this is clearly an empiricalquestion-an empiricalquestion, moreover, aboutwhich neitherwe nor Moes now have sufficient information
to say anythingdefinitive."9
A rich new dataset from every surviving document on slavery and
manumissionin Louisiana from 1770-1820 allows me to paint a qualitative, quantitative,and economic portraitof manumissionin Louisiana.
I examine whether slaves who purchasedtheir freedom paid above or
below marketprices. Moreover, a change in the laws regulatingmanumission following the LouisianaPurchaseallows me to explore how legal rights affected the economics of manumission, and better explain
why manumissionwas relatively rarein the United States.
EVIDENCEAND DATA
The question of whether manumittedslaves paid the marketprice for
their freedom has puzzled economic historiansfor over a century.A. M.
Wergeland,in a survey article on slavery in medieval Europe,notes that
data on the price of manumissionare almost unavailable.He cites some
prices listed in legal codes, which were well below "marketvalue," but
points out thatthese amountswere most likely not actuallyused in practice.10 In an early cliometric exercise, William Westerman examined
over a thousandDelphic manumissions,from 201 to 53 BC.The majority were outrightgrants, whereby a slave purchasedher unconditional
8 See Fenoaltea,"Slavery,"note 40, p. 645.
9 Conradand Meyer, "Reply,"p. 188.
10Wergeland,"Slavery,"p. 242.
Capitalismand Freedom
1011
freedom. He reports that an examination of the manumissive price of
over 500 slaves reveals that slaves paid higher prices for their freedom
than the average marketprice. Westermanascribes the higher prices to
the monopoly power of slave-holders."
Louisiana is a particularlygood place to study manumission:it was
relatively common, and records are well preserved.For example, archival copies in Spain have helped fill gaps in the surviving records in
Louisiana.KimberlyHangeruses surviving notarialrecordsfrom Spanish New Orleans to study manumission.12 She provides some demographic information,along with the annual average price paid from a
sample of 700 manumissions over the period from 1771 to 1803, but
does not comparethese prices to the marketprices. LawrenceKotlikoff
and Anton Rupert examine jury records of manumissions in New Orleans from 1827 through 1846, and find that free blacks, as purchasers,
were involved in a significant proportionof manumissions. However,
because price data were typically not recordedin the jury records, they
cannot investigatethe terms of the manumissions.13
I use informationfrom two recent databases:the "Louisiana Slave
Database" and "Louisiana Free Database," collected by Gwendolyn
Hall and her team.14 They spent 15 years collecting informationfrom
every document available relating to slavery in Louisiana, from the arrival of the Europeansuntil 1820. Sources include every archive and
courthouse in Louisiana, as well as archives in Mississippi, Alabama,
Florida, Texas, France, and Spain. The databases contain detailed descriptions of over 100,000 individual slave sales or other transactions.
Four thousand sixty records relate to manumission.'5Table 1 provides
some key summarystatistics about the coverage and scope of principal
demographicvariablesof interest.
The various documentswere producedin the course of normaltransactions, and consist primarilyof sale contracts,probaterecords, manuscripts, and published census records. They provide informationabout
the age, sex, origin, health, character,and skills of slaves and manumitted slaves. In addition, the investigatorscoded informationon the relationship between freer and freed, whether a freed slave was (or potentially was) a child of a master,the illnesses or disabilities of the slave or
freed person, and the location.
" Westerman,Slave Systems.
12Hanger,BoundedLives. These data are also in the Hall database.
13Kotlikoff and Rupert,"Manumission."
14Hall, Databases.
15 Duplicate documentswere deleted, though if a person appearedmultiple times in different
documents,the observationswere retained.
1012
Cole
TABLE1
SUMMARY STATISTICSIN THE SLAVE AND FREEDATABASE
Documents in Manumission
Database
(N = 4,060)
PercentageCoded
Age is coded
Mean
Sex is coded
Women(%)
Race is coded
Summary
Documents in Slave
Database
(N= 100,666)
Percentage
Summary
96.5
98.6
20.0
17.8
99.0
90.0
62.5
43.6
90.0
94.0
Black(%)
56.5
93.0
"Mulatto"(%)
38.8
5.8
Other(%)
Sale price is coded
Meana
Documenttype
Estate inventory(%)
4.6
1.2
59.0
36.0
635.5
619.3
100.0
27.5
Estatesale(%)
3.7
49.8
Nonprobatesale (%)
Other(%)
Skill indicated
If skilled, artisanskill (%)
Numberof Documents:
1770-1803
1804-1820
19.0
8.7
1.7
23.9
17.1
29,823
58,610
a
in
the
series
sale
were
individual
in
deflated
real
1800
dollars.
using
Average
price
(Prices
McCuster,How Much is That?)
Note: Because values are often missing, summarystatistics, as well as the percentageof records
for which values were nonmissing, are indicated.
Source: Summarystatisticsare from Hall, "Databases."
2,606
1,296
During the period covered by the databases,Louisianawas ruled by
three regimes, with several currencies,and significant currencyfluctuations. Fortunately,a largenumberof governmentand commercialhistorical documentslist prices in several currencies,allowing Hall to convert
all prices into nominal dollars using the appropriateexchange rate. Hall
cautions,however,thatthe earlierprice dataare less reliable.The present
analysisinvolvingprice datais restrictedto observationsfrom 1770 on.16
IN
LEGALCONTEXTAND THENATUREOFMANUMISSION
LOUISIANA
From 1769 until 1803 Louisiana was under Spanish control.'7Compared to the French code noir it replaced, and U.S. slave codes which
16Hall, "Prices."
Inclusion of slave sales and manumissionspriorto 1770 does not change the
results. (Results availablefrom author).
17 The Spanishslave code was not promulgateduntil 1770. (Baade, "Law ," p. 56).
Capitalismand Freedom
1013
followed, the Spanish legal system affordedseveral specific protections
to slaves. Masters did not require any official permission to manumit
slaves; mistreated slaves could request resale to another master, and
slaves could purchase their freedom by paying their market price to
their masters."8
This last right, a system of self-purchasecalled "coartaci6n,"developed initially in Cuba prior to the first half of the eighteenth century,
and spread to varying degrees throughoutthe Spanish colonies.'9 The
linguistic root of coartaci6n is "cortar,"which means to cut or limit.
This system sought to balance slaves' aspirationsfor freedomwith masters' propertyrights, by allowing a slave to manumitherself if she paid
her masterher fair marketvalue. By custom as well as law, if a slave's
master refused a slave's request to purchase her freedom, the slave
could sue. If there was a dispute aboutthe fair price, each party,as well
as the court, would be provided an assessor, and the slave would be
freed following payment of the court-determinedvalue to the master.
These rights were guaranteedby officials called "sindicos,"who were
charged with protecting the rights of the poor, the Native Americans,
and the slaves.20
Although the right of self-purchasewas not codified into Louisiana
law (the other two protectionswere), coartaci6n in Louisiana"was recognized and enforced, nevertheless, in a steady streamof judicial decisions, averaging somewhat less than two cases per year for the thirtythreeyear period of direct Spanishrule."21
Hanger reportsthat approximatelyone in seven cases of coartaci6n
requiredcourt supervisionto set a fair price. Petitionerspaid litigation
costs, but these appear to have been relatively low. I found only one
enumerationof court costs, given as 27.5 pesos for a purchaseprice of
800 pesos, or about 3.5 percentof the sale price.22
When American administratorstook over Louisiana on 20 December
1803, they worked with local slave-holders to bring Louisiana laws in
line with other southern states, including eliminating the right to sue
for freedom.23In 1807 the first legislature of the Territoryof Orleans
52.
19
Bergad et al., "CubanSlave Market,"p. 131; and Aimes, "Coartacion,"p. 414.
20Aimes, "Coartacion,"p. 418.
21Schafer,Slavery,p. 2.
22Baade, "Law,"p. 69.
23 Ingersoll, "Free Blacks," p. 174. The Spanish legacy of manumissionmay have persisted
more in Louisiana than other states. Despite significant curtailmentof manumissive rights following the Louisiana Purchase,some steps forwardwere made. In 1825 Louisianawas one of
only three states to explicitly allow slaves to contractfor their own freedom. (Matison, "Manumission.") As late as 1860 Louisiana's manumissionrate was several times greaterthan the median rate of southernstates. (United States, Statistics of the UnitedStates, p. 337).
18 Baade, "Law,"p.
1014
Cole
TABLE 2
MEANS OF MEASURING
New Orleans
Manumissions
Slave sales
1725-1803
2,268
26,909
1804-1820
707
32,035
RuralLouisiana
1725-1803
496
15,147
1804-1820
589
26,575
Means of Manumission
33.7
51.6
47.6
43.8
Living Master/Mistress(%)
10.3
14.9
19.5
8.3
Self-purchase(%)
Purchaseby other(%)
22.2
11.2
16.5
25.0
Underwill (%)
15.0
13.3
9.7
11.5
Other(%)
8.5
13.2
9.3
8.7
1.1
0.4
1.8
2.7
Missing / Unclear (%)
Notes: This table gives the means by which each of the slaves in the Free databasewere manumitted. Thereare a total of 4,060 manumissionrecords.Descriptionswere manuallycoded into
the above categories.For comparisonpurposes,the numberof slave sales in each region-period
cell is also given.
Source: Data are from Hall, "Databases."
passed a law limiting manumissionto individualsover 30 years of age,
unless they had saved the life of their slave-holder.
WHOWASMANUMITTED?
HOW?
The breadthand depth of the Hall databaseallow me to paint a comprehensive picture of manumission in Louisiana. Unique in scale and
scope, the data are particularlywell suited for economic analysis, because a large share of the observationsinclude both individual characteristics and sale prices of slaves and freed slaves.
Table 2 indicates how each of the 4,060 slaves achieved freedom
between 1725 and 1820, in both New Orleans and rural Louisiana.24
The consensus view that manumission was less common in the American period than the Spanish period is correct:the documents in the database suggest there were only 2.3 manumissions for every 100 slave
sales in the U.S. period, compared to 6.5 per 100 slave sales in the
Spanishperiod.
In both the Spanish and U.S. regime, the most common path to freedom was an outrightgrantby a living masteror mistress. Why did masters free slaves? It is hard to imagine, in any other economic setting,
forfeitureof so much wealth as the gratuitousmanumissionof slaves in
the new world. Although one cannot hope to understandall the com-
Capitalismand Freedom
1015
TABLE 3
REASONS FOR GRATUITOUSMANUMISSION
Manumissionby
Living Master
(N= 1,611)
Pre-U.S.
Numberof manumissions
Reason given (proportion)
No reason given
Service
Affection
U.S.
Manumissionby
Testament
547)
(N-=
Pre-U.S. U.S.
990
621
387
160
0.28
0.58
0.26
0.64
0.31
0.04
0.71
0.24
0.00
0.79
0.18
0.00
Moral
0.03
0.00
0.06
0.00
Related (declared)a
0.12
0.05
0.09
0.04
Related (investigator)
0.20
0.08
0.16
0.06
Example of Comments
Gratuitousfor services given
Good services and love and
affection
"Forvariousmotives moving my soul"
His naturalchildrenbaptized
as free
CarlosNoel is probablythe
father
a
"Related (declared)"indicates that the person manumittingadmittedto a blood relationship
with the freed slave, whereas "(investigator)"indicates the investigatorcoding the documentdeterminedthat it was likely thatthe manumitteewas relatedto the slaveholder.
Notes: Many jurisdictions requiredslave owners to give "just cause" for freeing a slave. The
proportionsdo not sum to one because in many cases more than one reasonwas given.
Source: Data are from Hall, "Databases."
plexities in the relationshipbetween the owner and slave, the data can
speak to what the owners thought was most important.To manumit a
slave, the owner was typically promptedor requiredto give just cause. I
manuallycoded the causes recordedin the manumissiondocumentsinto
the five most common reasons. The data are presentedin Table 3, broken down accordingto whether the manumissionwas by a living grant,
or througha will, as well as by time period (Spanishvs. U.S.).
The prevalence of "good service" suggests that an incentive dynamic
may have been importantin as many as half of all manumissions in
which there was no monetarypayment. Appeals to the immorality of
slavery were surprisingly rare: perhaps those uncomfortable owning
slaves sold the slaves, ratherthan freeing them.
Although freers typically did not admit to a blood relationshipwith
the slaves they freed, family bonds were often a reason for manumission. Of the 2,158 manumissionsthat were grantsof freedom (by living
mastersor in wills), only 192 stated outrightthat the freed slave was related to the master. However, the investigators were able to deduce
from evidence in the documents and elsewhere that 323 freed slaves
were likely children of masters:thus approximately24 percent of gra-
1016
Cole
tuitous manumissionsinvolved relatives of the slave owner.25 A typical
case is perhapsthat of Genevieve, who in 1779 was freed along with her
brotherNicolas, in Point Coupee, upon the death of their'master, Simon
Macour.He recognized the childrenas his in his will: his widowed wife
and theirwhite son protested,but the slaves were freed nonetheless.
Also notable is the disappearanceof "affection,"and the sharp drop
in relationships, as reasons for manumission in the U.S. period. Although manumission by living masters was slightly more common in
the U.S. period (79 percent of U.S. vs. 72 percent of Spanishmanumissions), manumission for reasons of affection became much less common: affection is cited in 26 percent of Spanish, and only 4 percent of
U.S. manumissions.The difference may be attributableto differentattitudes towardsslaves: the Spanishtraditionrecognizedthat "slaverywas
not the naturalcondition of men."26Cubanlaw, for example, explicitly
allowed owners to free slaves in wills, provided such action proceeded
"from an honest and laudable motive."27 U.S. laws and attitudeswere
much less sympathetic.There is a less severe, but still noticeable, decline in the proportion of documents indicating that manumission is
grantedfor service.
The importanceof blood relations between the freer and the slave
probably also accounts for the skewed age and sex distribution of
manumittedslaves. Figure 1 graphs the age distributionof manumissions, decomposed by whether the manumissionwas gratuitousor by
purchase (left panel), and by gender (right panel). For comparisonpurposes, the age distributionof slaves in 1850 is given as a dashed line.28
Young children were significantly overrepresentedamong gratuitous
manumissions: many were children of the slave-owner. Similarly,
prime-agedwomen were much more likely to be manumittedthan men,
probablyboth because their productivevalue was lower, and they were
more likely to have been in intimaterelationshipswith their owners.
Manumissions appearedto follow the seasonal pattern of the slave
market.Outrightgrants of manumissionwere least common duringthe
summer months of July, August, and September(over the entire time
period, approximately 88 manumissions occurredper summer month,
25 The Hall data are broadly consistent with findings by Hanger, who examined notarialrecords of Spanish-periodmanumissions.She found that a majorityof manumissionswere gratuitous, and that women, children, and the elderly, as well as slaves of mixed African and European descent were over-represented among manumitted slaves. (Hanger, Bounded Lives,
pp. 28-30.)
26Hanger,BoundedLives, p. 25.
27 Knight,Slave Society in Cuba,pp. 130-31.
28 The slave population distributions are from the U.S. Census, as reported by Tadman,
Speculators,p. 240.
Capitalism and Freedom
Gratuitousvs. Purchase
Manumissionby Sex
.25
Purchased
Gratuitious
1017
Female
Male
S2.2
,-5t:-1
0-10
10-19
20-29
30-39
s
.15
40-49
50+
0-10
10-19
20-29
30-39
40-49
50?
FIGURE1
AGE DISTRIBUTIONOF MANUMITTEES
Notes: The left graphgives the age distributionof gratuitousand paid manumissions.The right
graphgives the age distributionof manumissionby sex. In each graphthe sum al all the bars is
equal to one. For reference, the age distributionof the 1850 slave population is given by the
dashed line. (The areaunderthe dottedline is also equal to one.)
Sources: The manumissiondataare from Hall, "Databases";the slave populationdataare from
Tadman,"Speculators."
whereas 113 per month occurredduringthe rest of the year.) Kotlikoff
reports a similar lull in slave sales at this time, and attributesit to the
fact that summer months were idle months: perhaps slaves seeking to
manumitthemselves also had less earningopportunityduringthe slack
summermonths.29
Southernmanumission has been described as a largely urban phenomenon, because there were more opportunitiesfor slaves to earn
money, and slaves could benefit from associationwith free blacks, who
typically lived in cities.30 The data confirmthat manumissionwas more
common in urbanareas. Though we do not have informationabout the
actualresidence of the slaves, 76 percentof manumissionrecordsoriginate from New Orleans (the only urban parish in Louisiana prior to
1820), whereas only 57 percent of the slave records originate in New
Orleans.31Of the manumissionsby self-purchase,81 percentwere in the
parishof New Orleans.
Historical accounts suggest that manumission was most prevalent
among skilled workers.Althoughthe shareof recordsfor which skill in29Kotlikoff,
"Structure,"p. 503.
30
Matison,"Manumission."See also Goldin, UrbanSlavery.
31 No
populationdata are available:thus, when appropriate,the numberof slave sales can be
used to scale the numberof manumissionrecords.
1018
Cole
formationis given is insufficient to make detailed claims, many records
indicate eitherbasic skills (such as laborer)or artisanskills (such as tailor). Skill distributionsare reportedin Table 1.
The prevalence of self-purchase or purchase by others is striking:
more than 30 percent of manumissions occurred either through selfpurchase or purchaseby other. Though typically described as an urban
phenomenon,manumissionby purchasewas prevalentin ruralareas as
well, during both the Spanish and U.S. administrations.Slaves earned
money in various ways, such as hiring their own time from their owners
and working for others or selling produce of individual vegetable
plots.32In 1806 Louisiana even passed a law obliging slaveholders to
pay slaves for work on Sundays,though it is not clear to what extent the
law was enforced.33
Manumission sometimes representeda complex legal contract,with
owners placing conditions of future servitude, good behavior, or additional payments on freed slaves. Approximately 12 percent of manumission records included additional conditions; they are detailed in
Table 4.34 The most common condition freed a slave after the death of
the master, though freers also demanded additional payment and required additionalyears of service. It is not clear how well these conditions were enforced,but historianshave documentedinstances of courts
siding with slaves againsttheir owners in disputes.35
Some calculationsby Robert Fogel and Stanley Engermanare informative here. Using the best estimates of slave wages, the cost of raising
slaves, and the opportunitycost of capital, Fogel and Engerman estimated that the break-evenpoint of holding a slave in the South in 1850
was 26 years.36 Thus, slave-holderswho chose to manumitslaves aged
26 and above easily earnedaccountingprofits.
Economic theory does not provide a clear prediction about the relationshipbetween the real price of slaves, and the incidence of manumission. The price of slaves increaseswith the value of their labor,but their
earningpotential (or the gains from reducing frictions in the principalagent problem) should also increase. Ronald Findlay studies this problem in detail and under strict assumptions derives comparativestatics
with respectto the interestrate,but does not examine the effect of price
32Matison, "Manumission."
33See Morris,"Measure,"p. 236, as well as the courtcase Rice v. Kade, 10 La. 288 (1836).
34 Twelve percentis a lower bound, as surviving documentsmight not mention all of the conditions, particularlyif they have alreadybeen fulfilled.
35Hanger,BoundedLives, pp. 185-86.
36Fogel and Engerman,"Philanthropy."
Capitalismand Freedom
1019
4
TABLE
CONDITIONSON MANUMISSION
Condition
Frequency
No conditions, or conditionnot listed
After deathof slaveholder
3,591
201
After N years more service
69
Upon payment,or more money required
62
Until legal age for manumission
32
Other
100
Examples
"Afterdeath & burialof master""After
deathof both masteres"
"Freedat the end of 3 years""Must
serve 2.5 years more"
"Mustpay 100 per year""Payp200 to
estate"
"Until 30 years of age" "treatedas free
till legal emancipation"
"If masterdoes not return""kidmust
remainwith master"
Notes: The authormanuallycoded into categories informationabout conditionsplaced on
manumissionsfrom the recordsin Hall's "Databases."
changes.37Similarly, the total wealth of owners increases as slaves become more valuable,but so too does the cost of grantingmanumission.
I find that manumissionsare positively correlatedwith prices. A simple regression of the numberof manumissionson the real price of a 30year old male field hand yields a positive and significant co-efficient;
this relationshipis robustto the inclusion of a time trend,and a dummy
for U.S rule (1803-1820).38 This holds both for total manumissionsand
for manumissionsby purchase.These results should be taken as indicative ratherthan definitive, because it is not clear what drives the timeseries variationin prices.
THEPRICEOFFREEDOM
Did slaves who purchasedtheir own freedom, or whose freedom was
purchasedby others (such as relatives), pay a price higher than their replacement cost? A slave's willingness to pay exceeded the owner's
valuation of the slave, because the slave would gain not only the economic value of her labor, but also freedom. Owners could purchase a
replacementfor a manumittedslave on the market.Owners may therefore have attemptedto extractabove-marketprices from slaves seeking
manumission,when legally allowed to do so.
The data show that institutionsand attitudesgoverning manumission
mattered.Figure 2 plots the number of manumissions and slave sales
thattook place from 1720-1820. A simple test, regressingthe proportion
37
"Slavery."
38Findlay,
Results availablefrom the author.Prices are deflatedusing data from John McCusker,How
Much is that?
1020
15
Cole
-
8,000
ManumissionDocuments(LeftAxis)
Slave Documents
(RightAxis)
6,000
100V
I
_
S 4,000
50
2,000
-
01720
1740
1760
1780
1800
1820
0
FIGURE2
MANUMISSIONAND SLAVE DOCUMENTS, 1720-1820
Note: Measure of the numberof manumissionand slave records in Hall, "Databases,"by year,
from 1720 to 1820.
of manumissionsto slave sales on a constantand a dummy for U.S. rule
confirms that there were significantly fewer manumissions per slave
sale under the U.S. regime: the number of manumissionsper slave record fell by approximatelytwo-thirds.39This is driven by both a decrease in the numberof manumissions,from an average of 114 per year
in the ten years before the LouisianaPurchase,to 76 per year in the first
decade of U.S. rule, and a substantialincrease in the number of slave
sales, from 1,182 per year to 2,512, as the free and slave populations
expanded.40 The elimination of coartaci6n led to a severe drop in the
level of manumissions,even as the numberof slave sales (and the slave
population)increaseddramatically.
To shed light on the economics of manumission,I use data from 400
manumissionsand 5,512 slave sales from the period 1770 to 1820. To
ensure as accuratedata as possible, I limit attentionto slaves who were
sold individually, and to slaves aged 30 and above. (For much of the
39This regression gives a constant 0.088 (0.005), meaning about 9 percent of slave documents prior to U.S. rule relate to manumission,whereas the dummy (-0.062 (0.009)) indicates
that only 2.6 percent of documentsper year were manumissions.I use manumissionsper slave
sale ratherthanper capitabecause there are no annualcensus records.
40Figure 2 also provides assurancethat bias from nonsurvivingdocumentsmay be minimal.
From 1807 through 1813, the law requiredall manumissionsbe registered in parish court offices. Since the numberof manumissionspriorto and afterthis period is similar,it is reasonable
to believe that the surviving manumissionrecordsin otherperiods are representative.Manumitted slaves would have every incentive to ensuretheirmanumissionswere well documented.
Capitalismand Freedom
1021
time period, there were restrictionson manumittingslaves younger than
30 years old.41 This also reducesthe likelihood thatthe person freed was
relatedto the slave-holder).
The richness of the data allows for a relatively detailed pricing
model, which is presented in Table 5. The estimated equation in column 1 is
priceipt= alX + s"*(Manum* Span) + 6us* (Manum* US) + Op+
t + c,ipt
The dependentvariableis log price, and the regressorsof interestare 5s,
the coefficient on the manumissiondummy in the Spanish period, and
Sus, the coefficient on the manumission dummy for the U.S. period.
These give estimates of the manumissionpremiumbefore and after the
Louisiana Purchase. Control variables X include a three-degree age
polynomial, dummies for male, light color male, light color female,
skilled (aged 30-40), skilled (aged 40+), African birth, and 11 month
dummies,as well as fixed effects for parish, Op,and year, Yt.
The general features of the model are similar to those found by
Kotlikoff.42Column 1 presentsthe results of includingthe entire sample,
1770-1820. The resultsindicatethatmale slaves commandeda premium,
whereas, not surprisingly,sick slaves, and those born in Africa fetched
lower prices. Light-colorskin was valued, but apparentlymore for males
than for females. The age-profile is declining, with 30-year-old slaves
commandingthe highest price, and falling almost linearly as the age of
the slave increases,again similarto Kotlikoff's findings.
The estimates do suggest that the system of coartaci6n was effective:
the point estimateof the coefficient on 4s is very close to zero, and precisely estimated,indicatingthat manumissionprices were equal to slave
sale prices in the Spanishregime. However, once coartaci6n was abolished, slaves paid a substantialmanumissionpremium.The coefficient
on Sus suggests that slaves seeking manumissionpaid 19 percent more
than their marketvalue.43 This result is statistically significant at the 1percentlevel.44
41 This
law is somewhat at odds with the facts: childrenwere commonly manumitted.However, if purchasedby or manumittedwith their parents, the intent of the Louisiana restriction
would be satisfied, because they would not be wards of the state. The results presented do not
if all slaves are included,not just those over 30.
change
42
Kotlikoff, "Structure."
43
Because the dependentvariableis measuredin log terms, coefficients on the regressorscan
be approximatelybe interpretedas percentageterms.
44 Including a manumission dummy throughoutthe entire sample, ratherthan one for each
time period, yields an insignificantpoint estimateof 0.05.
1022
Cole
TABLE 5
THE PRICEOF FREEDOM
Baselinea
Spanishmanumission
U.S. manumission
0.01
(0.04)
0.18**
(0.06)
Spanish
Period
Only
U.S.
Period
Only
Manumission
by Self
or Other
-0.04
(0.04)
0.19**
0.06
Spanishmanu. self
-0.01
(0.04)
0.05
(0.06)
0.18**
(0.07)
0.18
(0.13)
Spanishmanu. other
U.S. manu. self
U.S. manu. other
Spanishmanu. urban
Spanishmanu. rural
U.S. manu.urban
U.S. manu.rural
Male
Light color male
Light color female
Born in Africa
Disease
Artisan,aged 30-39
Artisan,aged 40 and
above
Ageb
Age2
Age3
Ruralor
Urban
Manumission
0.18**
(0.01)
0.28**
(0.05)
0.06
(0.04)
-0.12**
(0.02)
-0.46**
(0.05)
0.35**
(0.04)
0.41**
(0.06)
0.13**
(0.03)
-2.80E-03**
(6.79E-04)
1.44E-05**
(4.69E-06)
5,912
0.39
0.13**
(0.03)
0.29**
(0.11)
0.05
(0.09)
-0.12**
(0.03)
-0.37**
(0.08)
0.45**
(0.07)
0.39**
(0.11)
0.12*
(0.05)
-2.55E-03**
(9.51E-04)
1.27E-05*
(6.29E-06)
1,985
0.43
0.21**
(0.02)
0.26**
(0.06)
0.08
(0.05)
-0.10"*
(0.03)
-0.51 **
(0.06)
0.31**
(0.05)
0.41**
(0.06)
0.16*
(0.07)
-3.49E-03*
(1.51E-03)
1.94E-05
(1.10E-05)
3,927
0.37
0.18**
(0.01)
0.28**
(0.05)
0.06
(0.04)
-0.12**
(0.02)
-0.46**
(0.05)
0.35**
(0.04)
0.41**
(0.06)
0.13**
(0.03)
0.00**
(0.00)
1.44E-05**
(4.69E-06)
5,912
0.39
0.01
0.04
-0.03
0.12
0.18*
0.07
0.19
0.12
0.18**
(0.01)
0.28**
(0.05)
0.06
(0.04)
-0.12**
(0.02)
-0.46**
(0.05)
0.35**
(0.04)
0.41**
(0.06)
0.13**
(0.03)
0.00**
(0.00)
1.44E-05**
(4.69E-06)
5,912
0.39
N
R-squared
* = coefficient
significantlydifferentfrom zero at the 5-percentlevel.
** = coefficient significantlydifferentfrom zero at the 1-percentlevel.
aThe estimatedmodel in columns 1-5 includes
year, parish,andmonth fixed effects, in addition
to the listed controls.
bA
third-degreeage polynomial minimizes the Akaike InformationCriterion.
Capitalismand Freedom
TABLE5 -
1023
continued
c Columns 2 and 3 estimate the same regression on data from only the Spanish, and only the
U.S. periods, respectively.
Notes: Robust standarderrorsare given in parentheses.The model is estimatedon a sample of
slave sales and manumitteesaged 30 and above, because the legal age at which a slave could be
manumittedwas typically 30 years of age. Data are from Hall, "Databases."
To allay the concern that a change in the pricing model (for example,
different age-price profiles) confounds the estimated value of the
manumissiondummy, I estimate the models separatelyfor the Spanish
and U.S. periods in columns 2 and 3. A Chow test (results available
from the author)suggests thatthe pricing model did not change substantially between the two periods: the manumission premium, the male
dummy, and the age polynomial are the only parametersfor which the
hypothesis of equality across time periods can be rejected.
These results are robust to a variety of estimations techniques.45Yet
even the estimate of 19 percent may be an underestimate:after all, a
significant number of manumission records indicate that manumission
was grantedat least in part as compensationfor "good service." Recall
also that approximately 10 percent of the manumissive records place
some condition on manumission, such as additional service. Though
these recordswere not included in the precedinganalysis, it is certainly
possible that some of the manumissionsincluded in the analysis had additional,unrecorded,service requirements.
A nonstatistical concern is the potential presence of other omitted
variables that could bias the estimate of the manumission premium.
However, several reasons suggest this is not a serious concern. Most
importantly,there is no evidence, or reason to believe, that the recording of skills or characteristicschangedsignificantlybefore and after
1803. Thus, whateverbias there exists would be presentin both periods.
Yet, during the Spanishperiod, the system of coartaci6n would ensure
the prices should be the trueprices, and that is precisely what I find.
As a second test, we compare the manumission premium of those
who purchased their own freedom to the manumission premium of
those whose freedom was paid for by another.In both cases the owner
could potentially exploit monopoly power, but individuals whose freedom was purchasedby a third party are plausibly less exceptional than
individuals who purchasedtheir own freedom. In the fourth column of
Table 5, I present results from a regression that includes dummies for
four types of manumission:self-purchase(Spanish), purchaseby other
45In particular,using Donald Rubin's techniqueof matchingon observables,which is consistent even if the truemodel is not linear,yields nearly identicalestimates.(Results available from
author).
1024
Cole
(Spanish), self-purchase(U.S.), and purchaseby other (U.S.). The point
estimate for the manumissionpremiumfor self-purchaseand purchase
by other are both indistinguishablefrom zero in the Spanishperiod; in
the U.S. period, the point estimates are both 0.18, though the estimate
for purchaseby other is imprecise.
I conduct a similar comparison for urban and rural manumissions,
underthe premise that ruralslaves may exhibit less unobservedheterogeneity.46The point estimates for the urbanand ruralmanumissionpremium duringthe U.S. regime, reportedin column 5 of Table 5, are identical, though the rural premium estimate is imprecise. Nevertheless,
neitherapproachprovides evidence that slaves purchasingtheir freedom
were differentin unobservableways.
To sum up, it seems unlikely thatthe manumissionpremiumis driven
by omitted factors. Any explanationof systematic differences of manumitted slaves would have to explain why those differences appeared
only after 1803. And even if the level of the premiumwere wrong, I still
find the strikingfact that the quantityof manumissionsfalls as the price
paid by slaves purchasingtheir freedomrises, following the abolition of
the right of coartaci6n.
DISCUSSION
The evidence shows that a nontrivialfaction of slaves, includingrural
slaves, were able to purchasetheir own freedom, often at prices above
their replacementprice. Why then, was manumission, so common in
other slave systems, so rare in the United States? The most compelling
explanation advanced is that of Fenoaltea, who argues in great detail
that the threatof pain was such a powerful incentive to work in effortintensive enterprises,that free labor could never be as productive as
slave labor. Thus, a freed slave would never be able to compensateher
masterfor the net presentvalue of her labor.
However, this theory is not sufficient to explain the patternsdemonstrated in the data presented here. The frequency of manumission
droppedprecipitouslyafter the LouisianaPurchase,as U.S. rule erected
additional barriers to manumission. Moreover, although Fenoaltea's
theory posits that the natureof work in which slaves are engaged determines whether manumission is a feasible incentive, these arguments
were not advancedby those who advocatedlimiting manumission.
46 I designate a manumissionas a rural manumission if it occurs outside the parish of New
Orleans.
Capitalismand Freedom
1025
Opponents of manumission did express substantial concerns about
potential externalities of freeing slaves. Some thought the presence of
some free blacks would give slaves unreasonableexpectations of freedom, rendering them less productive workers.47A Louisiana court
sharedthis view, ruling that negative externalitiesposed by free blacks
justified state limitations of manumission.48These beliefs contrast
sharply with Spanish rule, under which the prospect of manumission
was held out as an incentive for work, and significantnumbersof slaves
gained freedom.49
Manumissionalso carriedimportantpolitical implications.In a union
strongly divided over the morality of slavery, the presence of freed
blacks in the South underminedthe claim that "slavery was justifiable
and necessary because Negroes were inferiorbeings and hence incapable of maintainingthemselves as freemen."50Finally, many southerners
feared slave revolts. Ulrich Phillips arguesthatmany Southernersfeared
that free slaves were likely to incite rebellion.51
CONCLUSION
My study confirmsthe consensus view that manumissionas an incentive scheme would probablynot have brought an end to the American
system of slavery: manumissionwas not common, and laws prohibiting
it were effective. My results, however, suggest that it is incorrect to
simply dismiss manumission as a very rare, infeasible, or exclusively
urbanphenomenon.In Spanish Louisiana, a system of coartaci6n provided a system of incentives to slaves to work diligently, which made
both the slaves and the masters better off. Owners manumittingtheir
slaves were indeed compensated the fair market value of the slaves.
When the United States took over, the right of coartaci6n was repealed,
and the Spanishpaternalistorganizationwas replacedby one less sympathetic to the motives, character,and aspirationof slaves. The loss of
the right to sue for freedom was an importantfactor in the subsequent
sharpdrop in the numberof manumissions.However, concernaboutpotential externalities (real or imaginary),racism, and the desire to preserve slavery as an institution ensured the decline. Still, hundreds of
slaves were manumittedgratuitously as a reward for "good service,"
47Holland,Refutation,quotedby Matison, "Manumission,"p. 149.
48Henriette v. Barnes, La. An. 453, 454 (1856), cited in Wahl, "Legal Constraints."
49 Elsa Goveia reportsthat Cuba in 1774 had 96,440 whites, 30,847 free people of color, and
44,333 slaves, whereas the ratio of free people of color to slaves in PuertoRico in 1827 was almost four to one. ("WestIndianSlave Laws,"p. 15).
5oMatison, "Manumission."
51Phillips,AmericanNegro Slavery,p. 398.
1026
Cole
and some managedto purchasetheir own (or relatives') freedom. Owners in this new regime appearedto exploit their monopoly position, and
chargedprices about20 percenthigher than marketprices.
REFERENCES
Aimes, Hubert."Coartacion:A SpanishInstitutionfor the Advancementof Slaves into
Freedmen."YaleReview 17 (February1909): 412-31.
Baade, Hans. "The Law of Slavery in Spanish Luisiana, 1769-1803." In Louisiana's
Legal Heritage, edited by Edward Haas, 45-86, Pensacola, FL: Perdido Bay
Press, 1983.
Bergad, Laird,Iglesias Garcia, and Maria del CarmenBarcia. The Cuban Slave Market 1790-1880. Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press, 1995.
Conrad,Alfred H., and John R. Meyer. "The Economics of Slavery in the Ante Bellum South."Journal of Political Economy66, no. 2 (1958): 95-130.
. "Reply." Journal of Political Economy 68, no. 5 (1960): 187-89.
Dew, Charles. Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge. New York: W.W.
Norton, 1994.
Goveia, Elsa. "West Indian Slave Laws of the 18th Century."Chapters in Caribbean
History 2, 1970: 9-105.
Fenoaltea, Stefano. "Slavery and Supervisionin ComparativePerspective:A Model."
This JOURNAL
44, no. 3 (1984): 635-68.
Ronald.
Findlay,
"Slavery, Incentives, and Manumission: A Theoretical Model."
Journal of Political Economy 83, no. 5 (1975): 923-33.
Fogel, Robert, and Stanely Engerman."Philanthropyat Bargain Prices." The Journal
of Legal Studies 32, no. 2 (1974): 377-401.
Goldin, Claudia. Urban Slavery in the American South, 1820-1860: A Quantitative
History. Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1976.
Hall, Gwendolyn.Databasesfor the Studyof Afro-Louisiana.New Orleans:Louisiana
State UniversityPress, 2000.
. Prices of Slaves in Louisiana, 1720-1820. Unpublished Manuscript. New Or-
leans, 2001
Hanger, Kimberly. Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial
New Orleans.Durham,NC: Duke UniversityPress, 1997.
Holland, E. C. A Refutation of the Calumnies Circulated against the Southern and
WesternStates Respecting the Institutionand Existence of Slavery among Them.
Charleston,1822.
Ingersoll, Thomas. "FreeBlacks in a Slave Society." Williamand Mary Quarterly48,
no. 2 (1991): 173-200.
Knight, Franklin. Slave Society in Cuba During the Nineteenth Century, Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1970.
Kotlikoff, LaurenceJ. "The Structureof Slave Prices in New Orleans, 1804 to 1862."
EconomicInquiry 17, no. 4 (1979): 496-518.
Kotlikoff, LaurenceJ., and Anton Rupert. "The Manumissionof Slaves in New Orleans, 1827-1846." SouthernStudies 19, no. 2 (1980): 173-81.
Matison, Sumner Eliot. "Manumissionby Self-Purchase."Journal of Negro History
33, no. 2 (1948): 146-67.
McCusker,John. How Much is that in Real Money? Worcester,MA: American AntiquarianSociety, 1992.
Capitalismand Freedom
1027
Moes, John. "The Economics of Slavery in the Ante BelIum South: Another Comment."Journal of Political Economy 68, no. 2 (1960): 183-87.
Morris, Richard. "The Measure of Bondage in the Slave States." Mississippi Valley
Historical Review 42, no. 2 (1954): 219-40.
Phillips, Ulrich. American Negro Slavery. New York: Appleton-CenturyCompany,
1940.
Rubin, Donald. B. "EstimatingCausal Effects of Treatmentsin Randomizedand NonRandomizedStudies."Journal of EducationalPsychology 66, no. 5 (1974): 688701.
Schafer,JudithKelleher.Slavery, the Civil Law, and the SupremeCourtof Louisiana
Tadman, Michael. Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders, and Slaves in the Old
South. Madison:University of Wisconsin Press, 1989.
Temin, Peter. "The Labor Supply of the Early Roman Empire."Journal of Interdisciplinary History 34, no. 4 (2004): 513-38.
United States. "Statisticsof the United States, 1860." Washington,DC: GPO, 1866.
Wahl, Jenny Bourne. "Legal Constraintson Slave Masters: The Problem of Social
Cost."AmericanJournal of Legal History 41, no. 1 (1997): 1-24.
Wergeland,A. M. "Slavery in GermanicSociety During the Middle Ages: III."Journal ofPolitical Economy 10 (1902): 230-54.
Westerman,William. The Slave Systems of Greekand RomanAntiquity.Philadelphia:
The AmericanPhilosophicalSociety, 1955.
Whitman, Stephen. "Diverse Good Causes: Manumission and the Transformationof
UrbanSlavery."Social Science History 19, no. 3 (1995): 333-70.