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One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of Emancipation

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In essence, this is an economic interpretation of Southern history in the late nineteenth century based primarily on statistical data. The authors began this project when they noticed the scarcity of scholarship concerning the economic institutions which took the place of slavery in the South; they felt it necessary for the understanding of the Negro experience to understand the manner in which the Negro entered into a nonbinding economic lifestyle in the years after the War Between the States and Reconstruction. A primary concern of the authors was the economic malaise of the South agriculturally and certainly industrially in the period from 1865 to 1914, a time of impressive economic growth elsewhere in the nation.

The authors devote much of their study to a region they define as the Cotton South, wherein they see homogeneous development. They stress the fact that they are economists and not historians--political, social, and cultural history are beyond the scope of this book. While the authors may at times refer to economic effects of noneconomic forces, they make no attempt to do anything more than offer an economic interpretation of the post-emancipation South; that alone signifies their contribution to the historical field. In the end, they give their ideas as to the evolution of a Southern economy that exploited farmers--white and black--and allowed for little or no industrial development.

I was a student of Dr. Ransom at the University of California, Riverside, and I majored in history. Though Dr. Ransom generally is considered an economist, he--more than anyone I've ever read or heard lecture--is able to articulate and present economics within its proper historical parameters, and show you exactly how, for example, whatever historical event is occurring, this is how it affected the world--the people--economically.